SALISBURY — Tita’s Cake House is a traditional Chilean family bakery with a delicious variety of artisanal cakes and pastries baked from scratch, with no mixes and all handmade. However, now, with a classically trained chef working in-house, the downtown Salisbury storefront has a new offering — hot lunch plates.

That chef is Todd Villani.

Villani is originally from East Rutherford, New Jersey, and before coming down to North Carolina, he worked alongside award-winning chefs in fine dining establishments throughout Manhattan. In fact, he was famed culinary chef, restauranteur and television personality Marcus Samuelsson’s sous chef for a time.

“We got invited to the James Beard House two times,” Villani said. “We were the fastest first-timers to sell out the James Beard House.”

At one time, Villani even had his own restaurant called Terre A Terre, a farm-to-table, 60-seat restaurant.

“That means down to earth in French,” Villani said. “My background is French and Italian. I went to the French Culinary Institute in Manhattan.”

Those times would soon come to an end, as they would for many people in Villani’s line of work. When the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc across New York and New Jersey, the restaurant industry was a huge casualty.

“COVID prompted us to get out of the area,” Villani said. “Everybody closed down in Manhattan, and all the guys paying rent moved to New Jersey and started buying up houses. There were bidding wars. We sold in two days and got $30,000 more than we asked for. Manhattan people were just getting out of Manhattan.”

With sights set on North Carolina, Villani began seeking a location.

“I looked in Mooresville,” Villani said. “I live in Davidson. I looked in Cornelius and Huntersville, and I could not find a spot, so I took an executive chef spot in Charlotte at Barcelona Wine Bar. I was there for about a year. Then, I thought to myself, let’s get some fridges and a storefront, which I found in Concord, and do grab and go, do a little market. That’s what I started doing.”

A year later, Villani had established a ton of contacts and had fridges in two different coffee shops with his grab-and-go offerings. His catering was also doing well, and he was staying busy.

“I met Manolo Betancur, whose wife, Leidy Ospina Betancur, owns Tita’s,” Villani said. “He said why don’t you meet Leidy and fill the fridges.”

Villani moved into the kitchen space at Tita’s with the intention of doing grab-and-go over the weekends and hot lunches during the week.

That lunch menu features soups, salads, sandwiches and pasta.

“That is where I am starting,” Villani said. “Eventually, it will get where we will limit the menu and do a little dinner and tastings.”

He also expects those dinners and tastings to feature wine, beer and spirit pairings.

Villani is still keeping busy with his catering, which bears the Terre A Terre name of his former New Jersey restaurant, but he’s also focused on making his lunch offerings a successful extension of Tita’s Cake House. He’s been doing it for about a month now, and the reviews online reflect the high quality of food that Villani has developed a reputation for creating.

A quick glimpse of the menu shows a portobello mushroom wrap and a pressed California Chicken sandwich. Hungry diners can order various seasonal soups, salads and rotating small plates.

Like his restaurant in New Jersey, seasonal changes will dictate food selections.

“Asparagus is coming now in the spring so we are going to start using asparagus and morels (mushrooms) so we will have stuff like that on our menu,” Villani said.

Tita’s Cake House is located at 115 East Innes Street. According to Tita’s Facebook page, the hot lunches are available Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Stop in to see what Villani is offering that day.