here is no restaurant more synonymous with Paris than Maxim’s, the legendary gastronomic and piano jazz haunt on the Rue Royale, equidistant between the Madeleine and the Place de la Concorde. It’s where Brigitte Bardot danced barefoot late into the night, where Jane Birkin cheekily slipped Maxim’s embossed china under her skirt on the way out following a holiday feast, where top 1960s-era model Antonia attempted to enter the restaurant with a live panther in tow, and where society swans, wealthy tycoons, movie stars, and celebrities mingled over French cuisine. It’s an Art Nouveau fever dream of mahogany, scarlet, and gold; of sinewy mirrors and patterned glass ceilings and whiplash statement lamps. Nearly everyone of note has dined and danced there since its beginnings in the Belle Epoque, when a young waiter named Maxime Gaillard opened the bistro in 1893, just six years after the Eiffel Tower
