1 rue du Mail, Paris 75002 (00 33 1 42 60 07 11). Meal for two, including wine and service: €125

It doesn't matter how good an impersonation it is. It doesn't matter whether it is a faithful homage rather than mere clumsy translation. Sometimes I just crave the real thing. In any case, I was goaded into it. Over the past few months I've reviewed a number of London takes on Paris brasseries and bistros. And each time some smart arse has commented that they could pop over to Paris to eat in a real Parisian bistro for half of what it cost me to get my shoddy London version. This is cobblers. Anybody who thinks Paris is cheap hasn't been there recently. A cheap meal in the French capital is about as rare as a charming Parisian waiter, one who doesn't regard service as practice for a spot of light waterboarding.

Still, though, the lure of the genuine article remains. So I booked a table at Chez Georges. When people wax unendurable about the joys of the classic Parisian bistro, Chez Georges is exactly what they are describing: a battered and weary wooden façade, lightly grubby net curtains in the windows, and inside a tiled mosaic floor with decades of grime in the cracks. It all looks like it could do with a good clean but you would never dare. There are big mirrors, low amber lighting and tables so close together that furniture has to be moved to sit round them.

The menu contains everything – champignon à la Grecque, foie gras in slabs the size of house bricks, steak au poivre – you need to find here. Outside in Rue du Mail it is 2013. Inside it is always 1946. For here is the thing. Paris is unashamed of its clichés. It works them. This is because its clichés are fabulous. British clichés are rubbish. The real British pub? A place of sticky carpets, darts and a table of racists in the corner. Parisian clichés are different. Not much else restaurant-wise in Paris is worth getting excited about. You will eat more widely and vibrantly in London or New York. But Paris does the narrow thing it's always done spectacularly well.

Stern black-clad lady waiters of a certain age, with a low centre of gravity and arms built for carrying, work the room. One brings us a big bowl of crisp radishes to crunch through while we choose. I order snails, which arrive on a battered metal tray that probably first saw service in the Franco-Prussian war. They are what the words comme il faut were invented for. The butter is hot and salty and garlicky. The snails are still soft, with that earthy, bitter edge. The entire kitchen from Balthazar in London needs to come here and eat them for an education.

My companion orders the soused herring. They plonk a huge pot of the fillets with rings of pickled onion to one side of her and another vast bowl of potato salad to the other. She is invited to serve herself until she is done. The potatoes are comforting and slightly bland, for in this dish all the salt is over with the herrings. There is crunch from the onions.

For my main: an entrecôte, served so rare it spills itself across the plate, alongside a dish of bone marrow and a bowl of coarse sea salt, because by themselves the steak and marrow aren't quite bad enough for me. There is so much bone marrow my Irish-born companion at first thinks it's potatoes. It is not. It is soft and hot and pearly and rich. Her salmon with spinach and a butter sauce is only slightly healthier. Chips are crisp.

We drink a chilled Gamay from the short list of house wines for €27, which is hardly a bargain, but at least I won't have to sell myself in the Bois de Boulogne as I would for a bottle from the main list. We finish with a crème pâtissière millefeuille and a tarte au citron. Both are absolutely perfect, because they have to be. For if they weren't, there would be no point to Chez Georges. Being perfect, being itself, being absolutely blind to modernity is why you come. I'm glad I did.

Jay is holding a masterclass, Choosing your words: the craft of good writing, at 6.30 on 21 May at the Royal Society of Medicine, London. Learn more and book tickets

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1