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Sylva Senat in deal at Letto Deli site

The Tashan alumnus won't reveal too many details yet.

If I had a dime for every restaurateur who expressed serious interest in the shuttered Letto Deli at 13th and Chancellor Streets in Center City...

Stephen Starr, Jose Garces, Umami Burger...

OK. That's 30 cents.

Now someone else has looked and plans to pull the trigger. (That's 40 cents.)

Chef Sylva Senat, who has been developing a restaurant company of his own since leaving Tashan last year, is part of a group that plans to open on that site.

But the plan is to raze the low-slung building - empty for six years - and construct a new one.

Senat cautioned that it was still early in the process but intimated that the restaurant would be "something fun, elegant and chef-driven." He declined to specify the name or the concept.

The ink on the lease is barely dry, and he has no projected timeline. "I want to be respectful to the neighbors here," he said, a common refrain early in a development's process.

Right now, Senat is in Newport News, Va., opening an Asian fusion restaurant called IppinMono Kitchen, which should start serving in mid-August.