Anya Firestone’s job as a luxurious tour information in Paris has introduced her to many rarefied corners of the town. However solely just lately did she do one thing that numerous locals and guests have finished over the past 130 years: Guide a reservation at Maxim’s, the storied French restaurant that opened in 1893 and has counted Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Margrethe II of Denmark, Jean Cocteau, Jane Birkin and Man Ray amongst its patrons.

“The place was packed,” Ms. Firestone, 35, stated of the night time she ate there in late November. “There was vitality — the ghosts of Maxim’s are most likely completely happy.”

Ms. Firestone, who has lived in Paris on and off since 2010, hadn’t tried to dine there sooner as a result of the restaurant fell “off my radar,” she stated, partly as a result of she wasn’t conscious if it was nonetheless functioning as a restaurant. She was not alone in that notion.

“Many individuals, even most, didn’t notice it was open as a restaurant,” stated Pierre Pelegry, a director at Maxim’s who has labored there for 27 years and was employed by Pierre Cardin, the French dressmaker, after he purchased the restaurant in 1981.

The main target at Maxim’s in recent times had shifted to non-public occasions, Mr. Pelegry stated, and for some time it was open to diners solely from Wednesdays by Saturdays. It resumed every day bookings in November, two months after the Paris Society, a French hospitality group, took over operations as a part of a take care of the Cardin household. (Mr. Cardin died in 2020; his heirs have since been entangled in a battle over his property.)

The three-story house, which has a small stage on its floor ground, has lengthy been a favourite of the style set. Fendi is planning to have an occasion there throughout Paris couture week this month, and final 12 months Maxim’s hosted events thrown by Valentino and Dior. Alexa Buckley Roussel, a shoe designer, and Alexandre Roussel, whose father is a trend govt, had the welcome party for their wedding on the restaurant in September.

“Maxim’s transports you,” Ms. Buckley Roussel, 32, stated, “and we wished to present our friends a real immersion.”

Over the a long time Maxim’s has been acknowledged for its meals — it as soon as had three Michelin stars — in addition to for its interiors, which embrace bronze components, velvet upholstery, stained glass and different particulars attribute of the Artwork Nouveau fashion that grew to become in style after the restaurant first opened within the late 1800s. The house has been used as a location for movies, together with “Gigi” and the 1952 model of “Moulin Rouge,” and for Vogue photo shoots.

In 1979, its inside was designated a historic landmark by the French authorities. Cordélia de Castellane, the inventive adviser at Paris Society tasked with refreshing Maxim’s look, stated that the designation gave the restaurant’s new operator little probability to vary its look. However she was largely OK with that: When she was requested to assist with the hospitality group’s takeover, she recalled considering, “I’ll take the job, however I’m not touching something!”

Ms. de Castellane, 42, who can be the inventive director of Dior’s child and residential strains, stated her “small interventions” at Maxim’s included new floral upholstery for banquettes and altering the shades on tabletop lamps from a reddish to a pinkish hue.

She additionally tweaked the restaurant’s emblem, which underneath Mr. Cardin’s possession had turn into a stylized M that she stated seemed “an excessive amount of” just like the golden arches of McDonald’s.

After Mr. Cardin purchased Maxim’s, it began functioning as a model: New places had been opened in New York and world wide, a few of which have since closed, and the restaurant’s title started showing on merchandise together with baggage and kitchenware.

Amanda Lear, a mannequin and singer in Paris who previously wrote gossip columns for British publications, stated in an electronic mail that Maxim’s had “misplaced its magic” due to these efforts to develop the enterprise.

Within the Nineteen Seventies, Ms. Lear typically ate on the restaurant with Salvador Dalí. “Every visitor needed to go in entrance of his desk when getting into the room and naturally they stopped by to salute,” she stated.

Extra just lately, she went there to carry out on the Dior occasion held final 12 months, the place she sang “Vogue Pack,” a disco single she launched in 1979. Its lyrics embrace the road “In Paris you go to be seen at Maxim’s.”

Ms. Lear was cautiously optimistic in regards to the restaurant’s new operator and subsequent chapter.

“Hopefully they may resurrect it,” she stated. “However I’m not certain that the rock stars and the Kardashians of at this time will succeed to carry again the glamour of this historic place.”