If you ask the team at Fresco on First what’s the most important thing they do, it’d be hard to pick just one: Serving a wide variety of signature dishes and traditional favorites? Helping people to eat healthier? Having a friendly staff?

As far as owner Sebero Basilio is concerned, those are all his first priorities.

Basilio co-owns Fresco on First in downtown Dixon along with partners Don Hatton and Matt Fuller. The restaurant serves up its own take on sandwiches, salads, omelets, crepes and a wide variety of other dishes and drinks, all while focusing on food that won’t keep calorie counters busy adding up the numbers, but enjoying the food.

“It’s still the American style, but something different than others around here,” Basilio said. “Our focus is to help the community to eat better.”

While Basilio is a big believer in encouraging people to eat healthy, his menu still offers some traditional favorites for his meat-and-potatoes customers. While most of the menu keeps fruits and veggies front and center, items such as burgers and fries and biscuits and gravy will still make fans of comfort food comfortable.

The drink menu is much same: a focus on healthy alternatives while offering traditional favorites. Diners can get fresh fruit smoothies and boba teas, along with hot and iced espressos, lattes, cappuccinos, soft drinks, beer, martinis, margaritas and cocktails.

One word that looms large at the restaurant is “fresh” — in fact, it’s right there in the name, if you speak a little Italian. Fresco is the Italian word for “fresh,” so when customers hear the restaurant’s name, they’ll know what’s served and where it’s served: fresh-made food on First Street — Fresco on First. To ensure that the kitchen is always stocked with fresh ingredients, Basilio gets up to three deliveries a week.

Another word you’re likely to learn to use more is “try,” as in: “Oh, I think I’ll try that!”

Restaurant manager Sheri Hoyle enjoys it when she waits on a table and hears the word “try” come from curious connoisseurs; it’s a buzz word that gets her and her staff engaged with customers and talking about their menu — and when they check in with customers, they like to hear “I’m glad I tried it.”

“I like seeing people enjoy themselves and trying something new, having a good experience and wanting to come back and telling people all about it,” Hoyle said. “They make a lot of connections with the servers and baristas, and we like doing that at lot. We try to have personal connections with a lot of people, and we have a ton who come in on a regular basis just to see certain servers or whoever.”

Basilio also likes to make sure customers can get what they want from the menu anytime he’s open. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are available from when the restaurant opens at 7 a.m. to when it closes: evenings on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, and afternoons on other days.

If you’re looking for a little boost that’ll charge you up and fill you up, the power salad combines the essentials that’ll help you get through the day, and it’s become a favorite among morning customers, Basilio said. It has a spring mix of greens, lettuce, avocado, feta cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, walnuts, chickpeas and carrots.

“It has all of the ingredients that can fill you up,” Basilio said. “Sometimes when you eat a salad, you can still be hungry. With this salad, you’ll eat it and get full. It’s got the proteins and the carbs all in one.”

The Buddha Bowl is another customer favorite, Hoyle said, and the idea for it came from one of Fresco’s cooks. It brings together jasmine rice, cherry tomatoes, mango, feta cheese, spinach, corn; and choices of chipotle or honey mustard lime sauce, and chicken or steak.

“When we get them hooked on that, we get them back,” Hoyle said. “People read it on the menu and are like, ‘Mango?’ Who puts mango with steak? But it’s amazing together.”

Basilio and Hoyle also like to offer dishes that look as good as they taste.

Presentation is important, and when they post a picture-perfect dish on social media or on the menu, they want customers to get a picture-perfect dish, too. They even have monthly meetings with their staff to make sure that remains a point of pride.

Basilio cooked at other restaurants prior to becoming the head cook at Ginkgo Tree Café in 2019, where Fresco on First is today. The name was changed in 2022 and Basilio bought it from its previous owners not long after that.

With the change in the restaurant’s name also came a change in the menu. Ginkgo Tree stuck to a more vegetarian lineup and didn’t have the burgers and meat omelets that Fresco on First now offers. Basilio expanded the menu to a more “middle of the road” approach, he said, to include dishes with a wider appeal.

“When we changed the name, a lot of people started to come in curious to see what was different,” Basilio said. “The people responded real good.”

Menu specials are offered throughout the week, mostly consisting of new ideas the staff comes up with. Promotions include free entrees for kids and free coffee, both on Tuesdays and with the purchases of an entree, and free wine with an entree purchase from 4 to 8 p.m. Saturdays.

Fresco on First also hosts events such as wine tastings, open mic nights and paint-and-sip classes; and trivia contests are held each Friday from 6 to 8 p.m.

Whether they come for the food, fun, or friendly faces, for Basilio and his team, it’s all about making connections.

“We help our servers help our customers with what they would like to eat, offering them healthy food and different drinks,” he said. “It makes a connection with the customers to make them come back and feel comfortable and enjoy being here.”

Fresco on First, 216 W. First St. in downtown Dixon, is open from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday and Monday, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday, and 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

Find it on Facebook or call 815-677-9144 for more information.