This will be the company’s first store in the city and the news has been received with the excitement some New Yorkers might feel upon hearing that HBO has committed to 25 seasons of “Succession.’’

If you have not been to New York in a very long time; if you imagine it as a place where people shop at six different twee places for 12 ingredients that make up a single dinner, as if it were the Left Bank in the 1960s, then you will wonder how a supermarket could compel such fascination.

At heart is a paradox. New Yorkers remain in a state of perpetual grief over the constant shuttering of independent stores and restaurants (City Bakery being the most recent example) and at the same time often reserve their most ardent enthusiasm for new big-box stores with parking lots and bulk purchasing.

No one moves to the city to push an oversize metal cart down an aisle and save 45 cents on cold cuts. Yet so many of us now revel in the opportunity to do the things we fled the suburbs to avoid.

Why is this? In truth, I would rather get a call from a friend offering a ride to Ikea than I would from someone inviting me to lunch at Le Bernardin. Only one of those experiences will deliver you home with an eight-pack of wooden hangers for $4.49.