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Itsu Ltd., the London sushi chain where a former Russian spy ate before he died of radiation poisoning, is expanding to New York, Bloomberg reports.

The chain, which has 11 locations in London, will open a restaurant at the World Financial Center in Manhattan today and expects to open other restaurants in the city soon, Glenn Edwards, Itsu’s head of operations, said in an interview.

Itsu endured a flurry of uninvited publicity after the death of Alexander Litvinenko, a former lieutenant colonel in Russia’s Federal Security Service.

Litvinenko ate at the Itsu restaurant near London’s Piccadilly Circus on the day he became ill. The publicity may actually help Itsu’s New York expansion, said Graham Hales, a director at brand consultant Interbrand Ltd.

“It sounds macabre and opportunistic to say that this is Itsu’s moment, but they just have to make sure they manage it properly,” Hales said in a phone interview from his London office. “There is a point of notoriety that Itsu has achieved that it can now build upon.”

Itsu’s Piccadilly restaurant is one of about a dozen places where investigators have found traces of polonium 210, the radioactive isotope that poisoned Litvinenko. Litvinenko, who had become a British citizen, died Nov. 23 with a “significant” amount of the material in his body, doctors said. He was 43.

Mario Scaramella, who dined with Litvinenko at Itsu the day he became ill, said in a Dec. 6 interview with Cable News Network that the pair probably weren’t poisoned at the restaurant because there were no other people in the shop and nothing strange happened there.

The Piccadilly restaurant has been closed since Nov. 24. Itsu plans to reopen the shop with a new look after Christmas, said Graham Shear, a lawyer for Itsu at Teacher Stern Selby in London. Most of the other locations are busier than normal, Shear said, declining to give sales figures.

Itsu, owned by the founder and managing director of the Pret a Manger sandwich-shop chain, said at a Dec. 6 press conference in London that none of its employees had become ill.

McDonald’s Corp., the world’s largest restaurant company, owns 33 percent of Pret. It doesn’t own a stake in Itsu, the company said.

“We were an entirely innocent party in this. It is lucky for us we were able to shut down the small area where it happened,” Shear said. “Our first concern is for our staff and our customers.”

Even if news stories link Itsu to Litvinenko’s death, the publicity may be better than being anonymous in a market like New York, where there are plenty of sushi bars, Hales said.

“I understand that people may swerve away from it at the moment, but one would hope it is just a moment in time,” Hales said.

Itsu’s first New York location is in a financial district similar to London’s, where bankers and stock brokers pay as much as 10 pounds ($19.50) for a box of sushi.

Some London patrons say they have been reluctant to dine at Itsu since the connection to Litvinenko became known.

“It’s just because of the name and connotations,” said Martin Ing, a 26-year-old banker, as he bought lunch at another sushi restaurant across the street from the Itsu store at Finsbury Square. “I used to eat there all the time.”

Ron Paul, president of Chicago-based restaurant consultant Technomic Inc., said it may be difficult for Itsu to reopen the Piccadilly shop where Litvinenko dined.

“Consumers tend to associate these incidents with the location and not the brand,” Paul said in a phone interview. “Closing that location might be the smartest thing to do because the location might be considered tainted, especially with radioactivity.”

Some Itsu customers haven’t been put off by the Litvinenko story. Last week, Marc Lueck sat at the sushi counter in the Itsu shop at London’s Canary Wharf with a pile of sushi plates rising beside him.

“It could have happened in a French restaurant,” Lueck said as he helped himself to another selection from the sushi conveyor belt.

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