Humble beginnings

The foundation stone for hospitality and quality was laid in 1780 in Nienstedten, when the confectioner Nikolaus Paridom Burmester, inherited house no. 401 on the Elbchaussee and began to produce delicious cakes and pastries for appreciative customers. Very unfortunate then, when ten years later the confectioner’s passionate love of all things nautical turned out to be his undoing: a cannon built specially to greet passing ships cost him his life in a tragic accident.......

This sudden end of the company’s founder did not signify the end of the house overlooking the Elbe River. When a French landscape gardener by the name of Daniel Louis Jacques, arrived in Hamburg to make a new life, he was not only attracted by the beautiful banks of the Elbe River, but also by the widow Elisabeth Burmester and her successful confectioner’s shop. The Frenchman, who eventually took the German form of his surname ‘Jacob’, bought the business and married the lady of the house in 1791.

Still in the same year the skilled gardener laid the foundation stone for the famous Lime Tree Terrace and welcomed the first guests to the retreat above the Elbe. The native Frenchman, now innkeeper, won over many asteemed, well-to-do families of Nienstedten to become regular patrons. He offered first-class à la carte menus and expanded the business into the banqueting sector. As such, Jacob became the founder of a gastronomic dynasty which was to span more than four generations in his adopted Hamburg.