“I can’t quite believe I’m involved in this,” said Charles Finch, standing before a shelf of imported olive oils at Dean & DeLuca in SoHo on a recent evening. He had the beaming face of a kid in a candy store. Or rather, a kid who runs the candy store.
“It’s such a joyous thing to walk in here because it feels happy,” he said.
As grocery stores go, the flagship of the fine food chain was undeniably festive on this night. Several hundred people, many of them movers and shakers in the food world, had been invited by Mr. Finch to eat and drink among the cheese and pastry counters and aisles of expensive and colorfully packaged gourmet foods.
There was a five-piece jazz band playing and a tower made of madeleines in the center of the store and white-smocked chefs whipping up snacks like seared scallops with ramp purée.
The reason for the party was ostensibly the introduction of Prince Street, a new food-themed podcast produced by Dean & DeLuca. But more broadly, it was part of Mr. Finch’s effort to “reinvigorate and re-energize” a foodie institution that was once a place where chefs came to get new ideas but has lost some of its prestige and market share to upstarts like Eataly.
When the chain was bought two years ago by a Thai investor, Mr. Finch became the vice chairman and a shareholder. It’s the latest endeavor for the British-born businessman and bon vivant in a long and varied career.
“I’m learning how to précis my background better so it doesn’t become a quagmire,” Mr. Finch said, with typical self-deprecating humor.
The son of the Oscar-winning actor Peter Finch, Mr. Finch, 53, followed in his father’s footsteps to Hollywood, working as an actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He was moderately successful but decided he was better suited to advancing others’ careers, and in the mid-’90s, he became an agent at William Morris.
After several years there, he opened his own firm representing luxury brands, leveraging his celebrity friendships to become a bridge between Hollywood and the brand world. Indeed, Mr. Finch is one of those funny, inquisitive, globally traveled people who seems to know everyone and who is impossible not to like.
He spotted Giorgio DeLuca, one of the original founders, among the partygoers and went over to him.
“The first thing I said is we have to find Giorgio and get him back,” Mr. Finch said to the older man, who delighted in the flattery.
Mr. Finch produced from his pocket what he called a “lucky nut” that he found on the beach during a recent trip to the Bahamas.
“You polish them up with your hand or a little olive oil,” Mr. Finch explained. “They get luckier and luckier,” then he added, “I feel good tonight.”
“Are you ill?” Mr. DeLuca asked.
“No, only emotionally,” Mr. Finch said. “Maybe I’ll meet a fantastic girl.”
Mr. DeLuca eyed the small smooth brown nut like a seasoned retailer.
“My mind hasn’t shut down,” he said. “We could have hundreds of lucky nuts. We could sell them.”
For his part, Mr. Finch is new to the grocery business, and a spotty cook, he admitted. He recently tried to replicate the famous roast chicken served at Chez L’Ami Louis in Paris, based on a recipe given to him by Francis Ford Coppola.
“I cooked it really, really hot for an hour, just like Francis said,” Mr. Finch said. “The whole thing was raw on the inside.”
Still, a party inside a supermarket made sense given Mr. Finch’s legend as a host. For many years, he has organized a popular party in London the night before the British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards. The event was celebrated in a book, “The Night Before BAFTA,” published in March.
Mr. Finch also gives a party in Hollywood the night of the Oscars, a more intimate, laid-back counter to Graydon Carter’s Vanity Fair bash.
As the store began to fill up, Mr. Finch shuffled down the aisles to meet and greet, a man in constant motion.
“Griffin, this is the cakemaker extraordinaire,” Mr. Finch said, introducing the actor Griffin Dunne to a bespectacled elderly woman named Sylvia Weinstock, who is famous for her wedding cakes, and whom he’d just met himself moments before.
Mr. Finch has brought in Mr. Dunne to contribute to the podcast, along with the novelist Jay McInerney, the food journalist Howie Kahn and others. True to form, he also enlisted celebrities like Mr. Coppola and Scarlett Johansson to reveal their food memories, or madeleine moment.
Mr. Finch hopes the podcast and events like the party will return Dean & DeLuca to its former standing in the food world, especially in New York. He is already quite smitten with his role as supermarketeer.
While talking at the party to Ben Leventhal, a founder of the influential blog Eater, Mr. Finch heard the younger man call Dean & DeLuca an institution, before going on to say it’s been stagnant in recent years.
Mr. Finch winced as though his child had just been insulted, then reached his hands to Mr. Leventhal’s neck in a mock stranglehold.
Written By STEVEN KURUTZ
Source: New York Times
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