Herr Max is a patisserie and Konditorei in Hamburg's Neustadt — a neighbourhood of nineteenth-century residential buildings close to the Alster whose ground-floor shops retain the character of an earlier retail culture. The facade is discreet: a blue-framed display window backed with elaborate layered cakes and a chalkboard outside listing current flavours (pistachio, vanilla, salted caramel). The interior continues the register: a jewellery-shop approach to pastry display, each piece given space rather than stacked. The coffee is treated with the same seriousness as the baking. It is a room in which the making of things has not been subordinated to the business of selling them.
Neustadt, Hamburg, Germany