GLOUCESTER — They stepped past cars parked bumper-to-bumper along the shoulder of a narrow back road with their arms filled with white chef coats, aprons, and boxes overflowing with cookbooks and kitchenware.
Some waited hours before the estate sale opened at the Annisquam home of celebrity chef Barbara Lynch on Saturday morning, just weeks after the City of Boston sued the James Beard Award-winning chef for nearly $1.7 million in unpaid personal property taxes.
Lynch, who oversaw a number of acclaimed Boston establishments including No. 9 Park and Menton, amassed a countless amount of books, art, furniture, clothes, and cookware over the course of her storied career.
More than 300 people turned out Saturday to pick through it all in a grand display of probing into the private life of an embattled celebrity, one whose legacy has been tainted by allegations of creating a toxic work environment in her restaurants through inappropriate and hostile behavior.
Among the attendees at the sale was Lesley Macdonald, 66, of Beverly, who managed to grab one of the last available chef coats that carried Lynch’s name, for $25. Obtaining one had been her top goal when she set out Saturday morning. Yet Macdonald, who said she had not attended an estate sale before, expressed mixed feelings as she walked down Hutchins Court away from Lynch’s French country home.
“There’s so much stuff,’’ she said. “It’s very sad to see all of her clothes in piles. It’s horrible.’’
Nearly two hours after the doors opened, dozens were still awaiting their chance to step inside. An employee of Best Rate Cleanouts & Estate Sales, which oversaw the sale, was handing out slips of paper to the waiting shoppers, each with a number that marked their place in line.
Macdonald said she was number 137 and waited in line for about 90 minutes. After finding the chef coat, she perused the countless books that filled numerous shelves inside the home. She grabbed one, “Baco: Vivid Recipes from the Heart of Los Angeles,’’ because she noticed it had several little notes and post-its sticking out of it.
“I love cookbooks and I got this one because she obviously used it,’’ she said.
Dozens of people milled about inside the home, thumbing through books, peering into kitchen cabinets, testing the durability of furniture, and inspecting paintings (some of which were done by Lynch). Each item had a small sticker with a price.
It appeared the home was still in use right up until the estate sale. Macdonald said someone had opened the kitchen fridge when she was inside and it was filled with food. A dirty dish towel sat in the bottom of the kitchen sink, and a skillet that appeared to have been used to make eggs rested on the stove.
Upstairs, a large pile of clothes placed on the bed in the master bedroom shrank as the day went on. About a half dozen people surrounded the bed, pulling pieces out of the pile and looking them over. A few others were in the bathroom off of the bedroom, trying on sweaters and looking in the mirror.
Alexa Hartley, 35, held a bundle of six books plus one of Lynch’s notebooks as she left the sale with her father, Bob Kessler, 67, both of Charlestown. She opened the notebook, showing pages of sketches and handwritten recipes, including one for quince consommé.
“She has some interesting comments about art, and then she had some recipes … I don’t know if I’ll ever make quince consommé, but it’s kind of interesting to see,’’ Harley said.
Kessler held a box that contained a collection of glass chandelier drops. The father and daughter said they’d been to a few of Lynch’s restaurants and were drawn to the sale out of curiosity.
“It’s kind of a sad whole backstory,’’ he said.
In October, Lynch announced she would be closing and selling her remaining restaurants, and the following month she was sued by Boston for unpaid property taxes.
The closures and the lawsuit came after a year of legal troubles at Lynch’s restaurants.
In March 2023, two former employees brought a class-action lawsuit against Lynch, claiming she failed to pay out tips to staff after her restaurants reopened from pandemic-era closures.
A month later, more than a dozen former employees came forward with reports of longstanding problems in Lynch’s kitchens, accusing her of inappropriate behaviors and hostile actions that resulted in a toxic workplace culture. Lynch, a sexual assault survivor who wrote about her past troubles with alcohol in her memoir, denied the allegations as “fantastical.’’
“I expressly reject the various false accusations lodged against me that I have behaved inappropriately with employees or crossed professional guideposts that are important to me,’’ she said in a statement at the time.
The lawsuit filed by Boston officials claimed Lynch had accrued a “vast unpaid amount of taxes’’ across her seven restaurants in Fort Point, the South End, and Beacon Hill that had gone unaddressed for over a decade.
Several people at the estate sale Friday said they came because they were simply curious to see the home and what was inside, but upon arrival felt like they were being somewhat intrusive. Others, who were more seasoned estate-sale attendees, didn’t bat an eye.
Amy Mahler, 35, of Dorchester, said she keeps tabs on estate sales in the area and typically attends at least one per month.
“It is nice to be able to look at the things that somebody else has loved and appreciated in their lives and kept, and then hopefully be able to bring new value to it in my own life or somebody else’s,’’ she said.
Nick Stoico can be reached at nick.stoico@globe.com.
