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.
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.
This was one of Café Jacqueline’s many quirks: Given the small staff, when Margulis was on vacation, sick or injured, the restaurant shut down. Reservations were only available by phone, and it often took several attempts to get a call back. Dinners stretched hours as Margulis painstakingly made each sweet and savory soufflé to order from an enormous pile of eggs in a wooden bowl.
Margulis, who grew up in Bordeaux and trained at a convent cooking school, opened Café Jacqueline in 1979 in a former shoe store. She went on to receive both local and national acclaim. The Chronicle named Café Jacqueline No. 26 on its Top 100 Restaurants list in 2025. Food television star Alton Brown once featured Margulis’ soufflés in an episode of his Food Network show, “The Best Thing I Ever Ate.” Her strawberry soufflé is “the best soufflé I’ve ever had, hands down, and consistent,” he said. “Every time I’ve been there, it’s still the best soufflé I’ve ever had.”
Mancuso planned to display the vacation sign as art.
“I’m not going to erase the message. It’s very symbolic,” she said.
The estate sale is scheduled for Friday until 1 p.m. and Saturday 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 1454 Grant Ave. — if it doesn’t sell out beforehand.