PARIS – Ms Anya Firestone’s job as a luxury tour guide in Paris has taken her to many rarefied corners of the city.

But only recently did she do something that countless locals and visitors have done over the past 130 years: book a reservation at Maxim’s, the storied French restaurant that opened in 1893 and has counted luminaries such as former United States first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, French poet Jean Cocteau, British singer-actress Jane Birkin and American artist Man Ray among its patrons.