"Almost 40 years ago, two young New Yorkers, Joel Dean and Giorgio DeLuca, opened their gourmet food emporium in SoHo, an up-and-coming artists’neighborhood in Manhattan. Offering customers a sumptuous celebration of food a place to experience all the pleasures of cooking and eating, the original store suggested a turn-of-the-century food department, with high ceiling fans spinning over a vast array of handcrafted products and artisan foods lining high, white walls.