Massively popular Sichuanese restaurant chain Chengdu Taste has locked in on a shocking new deal to open in the Arts District, one of greater Los Angeles’ hottest dining neighborhoods. Chengdu Taste will take over the closed Church & State, which helped to launch the light industrial neighborhood’s fortunes as a hip city epicenter a decade ago.

The Chengdu Taste move to the Arts District has been quietly in the works for some time, with owner/executive chef Tony Xu and managing partner Sean Xie joining forces with serial restaurateur Bill Chait and partner Taylor Parsons on the new restaurant. Chait spent years as the lead of Sprout, a restaurant collection that includes Bestia, Republique, and the Rose Cafe in Venice; he and Parsons briefly resurrected Church & State earlier this year, after the iconic French bistro was sold off by its original owners.

Together the new group will bring some of greater LA’s most talked-about Chinese food to one of the country’s hottest dining neighborhoods in late summer 2020. The plan, as of now, is to keep many of Chengdu Taste’s most popular tongue-tingling spicy Sichuan dishes (including the toothpick lamb and boiled fish in green pepper sauce) while adding a robust wine and cocktail program inside a redone space in the Nabisco Lofts building. Design firm Foss-Hildreth is on to oversee the decor.

Chengdu Taste has grown massively since first opening in Alhambra in 2013, adding locations in Las Vegas, Honolulu, and Houston. Xu has also opened complementary Chinese noodle restaurant Mian in the years since, and has become a staple of America’s still-growing Sichuanese food movement — even as more and more mainland Chinese chains have come to compete in America in recent years.

Chengdu Taste. 1850 Industrial St., Los Angeles.