SALISBURY — Salisbury diners have been going to Goodfellas on Fisher Street for years to enjoy fine Italian cuisine for dinner. Now, they can enjoy many of those same meals for lunch.

A few weeks ago, the restaurant began offering lunch-sized portions of his dinner menu three days a week.

From Wednesday through Friday, noon to 2 p.m., patrons can choose from items that have made the restaurant a fixture of the Salisbury dining scene.

Chef Jose Dos Santos’ menu features classic Italian dishes like a chicken saltimbocca, eggplant parmesan and veal piccata. Other entrees include Brazilian salmon, reflective of Santos’s home county, and the French staple, a filet au poivre.

With the lunch menu, not every item from the dinner entrees will be available.

For the restaurateur known around town as “Chef Santos” or simply “Chef,” it was about making his menu more accessible.

“I want to give people the choice to eat here,” Santos said. “People eat here for dinner for so many years but never had a choice to eat here for lunch.

“It’s more easy, there is no rushing this way.”

On Thursday, Goodfellas co-owner and Santos’ niece, Isabella Diniz, gave a rundown of the lunch menu.

“It’s going to be like the dinner menu but smaller,” Diniz said. “(We’ll have) Three dishes of chicken, some salads, one seafood dish, but lunch-sized portions.”

In addition to the salad options, Goodfellas will have French onion soup, lasagna and spaghetti.

Vegetarian options will include eggplant parmesan and manicotti. Manicotti is stuffed with a rich and creamy three-cheese filling, topped with marinara, and served with vegetables.

As far as the chicken dishes go, there will be a chicken alfredo, marsala and piccata. The former features a marsala wine sauce with onions and mushrooms, served with angel hair pasta and vegetables.

The piccata is sauteed in a lemon buttery white wine sauce topped with capers and similarly served with pasta and vegetables.

This is not the first time that Santos has offered a midday meal.

Diniz mentioned that she remembers being a teenager when the restaurant did serve lunch.

“About 10-15 years ago, he used to open for lunch,” Diniz said. “It was so much fun.”

Diniz is also from Brazil and moved to the U.S. at 14. She began helping at the restaurant as a host and decided to get into the family business when she was 21. Diniz recently returned from a stay abroad, where she studied Italian cuisine. She’s looking forward to adding that experience to the formula at Goodfellas.

Santos also owns a lunchtime restaurant on Innes Street, but he’s shelving that effort for now to focus on food at Goodfellas. He acknowledged that he may revisit that restaurant, known often as Quick Lunch, next year in the summer.

For now, he and Diniz want to focus on Goodfellas. So far, they have seen moderate success, but Diniz said that it’s been difficult to gauge lunchtime interest since they’ve had several holiday parties at the restaurant, which has impacted their lunchtime efforts.

Diniz and Santos both indicated that they’d received positive feedback from patrons about offering lunch and while it’s currently only three days, expanding to Monday through Friday remains in the cards. Santos added that he would like to keep weekends focused primarily on dinner and that part of the reason for lunch is also offering daytime weekday workers a place to grab a bite to eat.

Goodfellas is located at 123 E. Fisher Street in downtown Salisbury.