ANN ARBOR, Mich. – A project about four years-in-the-making, SavCo Hospitality’s latest addition, Dixboro House, will mix the historic with the modern right outside Ann Arbor.
Located in Dixboro, a small village northeast of Ann Arbor, the new dining experience will offer family-friendly features with modern dining, take-out and a playspace for children.
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Sava Farah, creator of SavCo Hospitality, said that the project began around October of 2016 and that Dixboro House has taken time to develop due to different types of structural and location challenges.
According to Farah, she saw the previous owner try to transform the old restaurant into a financial building and knew that the space needed to remain a restaurant.
“Had I known the scope of the project when I went into it, I definitely would have been apprehensive and any sane person probably would have walked away,” Farah joked.
Her company hasn’t just remodeled the restaurant, it has had to demolish the structure “down to its trusses,” bring utilities into the buildings and develop the entire building site.
“The seven acres that this restaurant is on is beautiful, but it’s a challenging piece of property and we wanted to be able to utilize as much of it as we could around the creek area,” said Farah.
But having conquered the remodeling of the 100-year old structure, Farah has also added a modern barn for different styles of dining at Dixboro House.
“But one of our goals with this project is to create a very family-friendly environment,” said Farah, who has two young children. “I really wanted to create a space that was going to welcome families in a way that I could only dream of -- because I haven’t seen this restaurant myself.
Farah said that she has looked coast-to-coast for great family restaurants and wanted to create the thing she has searched for.
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Combing the ideas of family-friendly and award-winning cuisine, Farah said the menu will contain wood-fired Neopolitan pizza as well as farm-to-table inspired foods. To do this, SavCo Hospitality has partnered with Gateway Farms from Plymouth to grow and provide organic produce for the eatery.
“Dixoboro in-and-of-itself is an agrarian community and it’s surrounded by so many farms. The farming in the area is tremendous so we are really wanting to tap into that,” said Farah.
The eatery will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner.
“When we think about families, we’re thinking about multi-generational types of families”, said Farah “This has always been a family-friendly place and we’re drawing a lot of our inspiration from the restaurants that were there in the past.”
The now Dixboro House has previously been three different restaurants: The Farm Cupboard, The Lord Fox and Roger Monks.
To continue the theme of family-friendly, there will also be an outdoor play space for children and a pick-up window. According to Farah, customers will be able to pick up ordered food at the window, rent a blanket and enjoy the property.
The natural playscape, which will also have seating for parents, allows families to not have to compromise what they are eating or drinking while enjoying nature.
Farah said the company wants to make a place for all sorts of customers so it has also taken the surrounding population of Dixboro into consideration. A more community-style area , which will be considered the main dining area, will be set up in the older remodeled barn.
And while the newer barn, which has been mostly made of glass, will be for more fine dining, Farah said, “We just want to be fancy about our food and our service and our hospitality. That’s what we want to be fancy about and then everything else will be really grounding and really natural.”
With an anticipated opening date opening in June, Farah said she is excited to begin assembling a team for the kitchen and said that a Michelin-starred chef is slated to take up a head position.
“We’re very excited about the talent at this location. You know, people really want to be involved in this project because it’s such a cool restaurant,” said Farah.
Learn more about Dixboro House through its website here.
SavCo Hospitality is responsible for Ann Arbor restaurants Sava’s, Wilma’s and Aventura.
Dixboro House will be at 5400 Plymouth Rd.