Early Friday morning, a line snaked down Grant Avenue in San Francisco of people waiting not for the latest and greatest pastry, but nostalgic keepsakes from a legendary restaurant.
They came for bags of escargot shells, signed menus, candelabras and large whisks on the first of a two-day estate sale at Café Jacqueline, the famed soufflé restaurant, which closed in January after nearly 50 years. Its owner and namesake, Jacqueline Margulis, retired after decades of whisking every soufflé by hand, with just one longtime server running the turquoise-walled dining room.
About 50 people lined up before the doors opened — one person arrived at 6:45 a.m., well before the 9 a.m. start time — and more than 100 were in line within about an hour. Once inside, people snaked around the perimeter, peeking into corners of the tiny kitchen and backyard. They snagged soufflé dishes, vintage cookbooks, matchbooks, pots, salt shakers and $25 menus signed by Margulis. Some grabbed the wooden chairs that generations of diners had sat on. A mosaic lobster table was up for $350, while spools of thread a butcher gave to Margulis in the 1950s to truss chickens went for $5 each. The organizers periodically closed the front door to slow the pace of the sale.
“We’re trying to grab a little bit of the history,” said Laura Mancuso, who purchased two whisks (one for herself and another as a gift for her sister in law), a Champagne crock, a microplane and a chalk sign reading “on vacation: will reopen June 14th” that had sat outside Café Jacqueline when it closed…