Add restaurateur to the many hats worn by Sébastien Jondeau, a longtime ambassador and men’s product consultant for the Karl Lagerfeld brand.
He recently became part owner of Anima, an Italian eatery at 78 Rue du Cherche-Midi in Paris that’s popular with chic locals along with certain fashion figures, actors and musicians.
“It’s a new adventure for me,” said Jondeau, who has ambitions to open new restaurants under the same banner in places like Saint-Tropez, for example, not far from his home base of Ramatuelle, France.
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Having spent 20 years working at the elbow of Lagerfeld until his death in 2019 — as his bodyguard, confidante and personal secretary — Jondeau also gobbled up plenty of excellent Italian food as he accompanied the German designer on hundreds of trips to Rome for Fendi, where Jondeau now lends his creative touch to sports-minded men’s products.
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Jondeau has a been fitness fanatic and sports enthusiast since his teen years, burning off his carb intake with boxing, kite surfing, foil board, jet skiing, mountain biking, motocross, and all manner of training and extreme sports.
While he watched his weight carefully, too, Lagerfeld occasionally tucked into a Margherita pizza at Anima with Jondeau, who also ordered pies to go for his boss near the end of his life, cutting it into little squares when illness got the best of him. On at least one occasion, the two men scarfed pizza seated in Lagerfeld’s Rolls-Royce Phantom.
Jondeau has long been great friends with Anima cofounder Marco Marzilla, an ex-impresario for Daft Punk who is still partial to their concert merch, and can be seen in the restaurant wearing other cool band T-shirts: Cassius, LCD Soundsystem, Orbital, Aphex Twin and The Beatles.
The new partners have no plans to change the sleek, yet casual 80-seat restaurant, decked out with leather banquettes and a black and white Calacatta marble eating counter.
“It works very well,” Jondeau enthused. That said, he and Marzilla plan to organize more events at the restaurant, and perhaps do partnerships with chefs from different countries and regions.
Anima specializes in Neapolitan cuisine, and bestselling dishes include vitello tonnato, tagliolino with lemon and capers, fried calamari, and the Margherita and Trastevere pizzas.
“I love Italian food,” Jondeau enthused. “Also, I really like the atmosphere of this restaurant, the attitude, the people who go there. It’s trendy, but at the same time it’s very easy-going.…It’s a simple place in the sixth arrondissement with very beautiful and nice food.”