A full-throated "Noooo!" is being shouted around San Francisco today by anyone who knew and loved Café Jacqueline, because the stalwart, soufflé-focused restaurant has closed for good.

As the Chronicle reports, Café Jacqueline's last night of service was before the holidays, on December 20. And chef-owner Jacqueline Margulis confirmed the closure on Monday.

Knowing that Margulis was still in the kitchen each night at age 89, many in-the-know San Francisco food folk made pilgrimages back to Café Jacqueline in recent years, or made a point to get there if they hadn't been. The restaurant, first opened in 1979, has always served pretty much nothing but soufflés — it was reportedly the only soufflé-focused restaurant in the US — along with French onion soup, escargot, and a couple of salads. And that focus on the single, challenging craft of soufflé-making, along with the Old World-feeling dining room on Grant Avenue, made this place a special destination with positively perfect, ethereal puffs of whisked eggs and flour coming out of the kitchen every night.

Café Jacqueline, which had previously only closed if Margulis was on vacation or ill, remained opened those 40 years until the pandemic hit (Margulis herself was hospitalized with COVID at one point). It reopened in October 2021, but then temporarily closed again in March 2024 when Margulis fell and broke her arm.

I made a point to get there when the restaurant reopened that summer, and then rumors circulated this past fall that Margulis, nearing age 90, was considering finally retiring. She was still back there with her traditional chef's toque, long gray braid and protective eyeglasses, using a mixer now to whisk the egg whites as she has for many years but still finishing each soufflé herself, by hand, in her big copper bowl, beside her big wooden bowl piled high with eggs.

The lobster and gruyere soufflé was a perfect, savory wonder, garnished with a fan of thin lemon slices, and the lemon soufflé at dessert divine in its tart and creamy simplicity. Food Network personality Alton Brown once raved about the strawberry soufflé being his favorite "in the world," and former Chronicle critic Michael Bauer was a fan of the prosciutto and mushroom soufflé, as well as the lemon.

In my experience, no soufflé was any better than any other. They were always just shining, delicious examples of the form, as exacting in their uniformity and airiness as a lifelong sushi chef's knife cuts of sashimi.

The restaurant was never about turning tables so much as creating a leisurely, romantic evening — a meal of two soufflés, one savory and one sweet, with a couple of starters and bread, could easily go past three hours. And it was often overseen by Matthew Weimer, her mustachio'd head waiter who worked at the restaurant for 30 years and seemed to share Margulis's commitment to this single, focused, humble-yet-elegant experience of dining.

As Margulis said in the Chronicle interview, "I had a fabulous clientele, very rewarding on every point. Some people were disappointed because of the time they had to wait. I had to crack every egg. You cannot pre-prepare souffles. If you do that, then you do not make a soufflé. You make an omelet.”

You can hear Weimer talking with admiration about Margulis in the documentary short below, shot in 2018, saying, "She's the first one in the door and the last one to leave [every night], and that is unique."

He also says that he and the team try to recreate the same day, the same shift, every night. "Getting that soufflé to the table, it's just so important. It's just dinner, but it's our life, it's what we do," Weimer says.

And it sounds like Weimer's life, and its complications, helped to push Margulis to finally hang up her apron. As she tells the Chronicle, Weimer had to leave town for a family emergency last month, and it helped her make the decision to close for good. She tells the paper she will miss her restaurant, but, "It had to happen sooner or later."

The restaurant at 1454 Grant Avenue is now for sale, and as Margulis tells the Chronicle, she'd be "glad to help" if someone wants to take over the space and continue making soufflés there.