Egg Magic

Entering Café Jacqueline to celebrate a friend's birthday was like walking into a warm and welcoming time warp. It's been awhile since I was last there to indulge in Jacqueline’s almost exclusively soufflé menu and, with the exception of my favorite surly waiter having turned friendly (a disarming though welcome change), everything about the experience was the same wonderful it's always been.


Toward the end of the meal, I went back to find Jacqueline in her teeny kitchen with her lone Kitchenaid mixer, copper bowl and mound of eggs she stores in a big wood bowl. Despite the heat of the miniature kitchen where she deftly and lovingly creates every single soufflé one by one, the eggs remain magically cool in their wooden nest. Jaqueline attributes the ‘magical’ part to the historical uses of the Native American bowl, which range from bathing babies to storing grain. It seems entirely apropos a vessel with such a rich history of nurturing would care so well for the precious eggs that have been the mainstay of her business for the past 30 years.