When I was young and living abroad, the first thing I did when I arrived in Paris to visit my family and immerse myself in the Parisian spirit of my teenage years was to go to a Brasserie !
The ones where an aunt I adored took me when she "went up" to Paris
with my uncle from Provence where they lived all year round: Le Bœuf sur le toit, near the Champs-Elysées.
It was his favorite place and it's no wonder as they were also both musicians and my uncle had even played professionally for 10 years in the Music Hall.
Those where we went out with friends to celebrate a great occasion
or during a dinner between lovers (of youth!): Le Grand Colbert, Le Vaudeville or the Au Pied de Cochon for night hungers, after the wild evenings in the trendy bars of the Les Halles district where we danced until no time!
Eating in one of the great traditional brasseries of Paris is above all the assurance of eating a 100% French meal of very high quality, then to benefit from an ultra pro service and as the French expression says "with small onions" that is to say: particularly neat and finally, to spend a moment in an exceptional setting with an Art Nouveau or Art Deco trend (logical, these great breweries generally all saw the light of day at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, in the middle of the Art Nouveau Art Deco period, during what has been called "the belle époque".
I live again in France since 1996 and you will have understood, I keep a certain nostalgia for these good traditional Parisian restaurants and if I am asked to recommend a good restaurant, 9 chances out of 10 that I will indicate one of these good Parisian brasseries!