Maison Adam

While the town of Saint Jean de Luz was preparing to celebrate the royal wedding of Louis XIV and Marie-Thérèse Infante of Spain in 1660, Monsieur Adam, a renowned local pastry chef, sent his prettiest servant Gachucha to deliver a tray of his almond macarons to the Royal party which were exceedingly well received.

Two years later Gachucha married Monsieur Adam, with their family continuing the traditions of the Maison.

Fast-forward a few centuries and the business still in the hands of the same family. After the Great War, the founder’s great-great-granddaughter Pascaline Adam took over the family business. She married Valentin Telleria, a shoemaker from Eibar, who had taken refuge in Saint Jean de Luz during the final Carlist War of the 1870s. Both developed Maison Adam’s pastry and confectioney offerings while they also opened new shops in the French Basque Country.

Upon the death of his father, Lenôtre-trained JacquesTelleria and his wife Bernadette, continued to develop their range of Basque cakes and fine chocolates. This was around the time that the first tourists arrived in the town after the setting up of paid holidays.

In turn, Jacques passed on the macaron’s secret recipe he’d received from his mother to his son Jean-Pierre, who had trained in both Paris and the United States. While preserving these family memories and traditions, the dawn of a new era arrived in 2018 with the latest generation, Andoni and Miguel Telleria – Adam, Jean-Pierre’s sons.