At Willie Bird’s, every day is turkey day
Diners seeking a traditional turkey dinner this Thanksgiving can overlook Willie Bird’s Restaurant, where reservations were booked solid a month ago.
There’s little cause to despair, though. It’s Thanksgiving every day at the venerable Santa Rosa Avenue eatery, an old-school institution that’s welcomed patrons since 1980.
With a menu loaded with more turkey dishes than seems possible, Willie Bird’s Restaurant has diners gobbling up everything from turkey steak and eggs to turkey melts to full-on roasted turkey suppers, 361 days a year, breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Employees - many on the payroll for two decades or more - get a break on Christmas and the day after, New Year’s Day and the Fourth of July. Otherwise, they run a steady pace feeding loyal customers craving all things turkey.
On average, the Santa Rosa restaurant serves up 1,000 pounds of white turkey meat per week, another 80 to 90 pounds of dark meat - hearty comfort food dished in generous portions.
“Nine out of 10 people like the white meat,” said Willie Benedetti, 67, the business namesake who opened Willie Bird’s Restaurant with a few partners (all family) at the urging of his late mother, Aloha Benedetti, who ran the restaurant for 28 years.
“We got it started and she took over,” Benedetti said. “She loved the place.”
Little has changed since the family restaurant opened on Santa Rosa Avenue, just north of where Costco is now located. The building, surrounded by plentiful parking, formerly housed a hofbrau restaurant established in the early 1960s; several original beer steins still decorate the place.
The simple décor, with wood paneling, booths and old-fashioned wooden tables and chairs, dates to the hofbrau days. The atmosphere is enhanced by turkey-themed artwork, platters and keepsakes, including a collection of turkey-shaped ceramic Wild Turkey bourbon decanters willed by Aloha Benedetti to her son, a Valley Ford resident.
“I like the décor. I think it’s classy,” said Willie Benedetti, an unassuming man with a quick laugh and a friendly demeanor. “I wouldn’t change nothin.’ ”
There’s nothing pretentious, and no one is complaining.
“It’s old-school, it’s dark and it’s unhip. It’s a great place,” said John Zimmerman, 68, a Willie Bird’s Restaurant bartender for 29 years. “It’s one of the last great places in town.”
Zimmerman says customers, many who have been coming for years, appreciate a good drink and a good meal at a fair price, plus the friendly service and camaraderie.
There are regulars like Santa Rosans Paul Stathatos, 62, and his son Chris, 30, who can’t remember a time they haven’t been stopping by Willie Bird’s for a meal or a drink.
“It’s just a friendly place, no pretense, just a nice atmosphere,” said Chris Stathatos, who works in finance. His dad, who works in auto sales, quipped that the real appeal “has something to do with turkey.”
All the turkey served at the restaurant comes from Willie Bird Turkeys, the nationally known free-range turkey enterprise that got its start when Benedetti was a teen. His late father, Walter Benedetti, raised turkeys from hatchlings on Stage Gulch Road bordering Petaluma and Sonoma; Willie Benedetti was a freshman at Sonoma Valley High School when he raised and processed a couple hundred turkeys for a Future Farmers of America project.
Without warning, he was about to become king of a turkey ranch-to-table empire, long before the birth of the farm-to-table movement.
He has been raising turkeys (and other birds) in Sonoma County ever since, all of them free-range, some organic.
Benedetti estimates 750,000 people will eat a Willie Bird turkey at Thanksgiving this year, with more than 50,000 fresh birds now being prepped for holiday tables. Some 11,000 alone were ordered through Williams-Sonoma, the gourmet foods and cookware retailer that also got its start in Sonoma Valley.
The restaurant will serve about 700 pounds of turkey on Thanksgiving, with some 450 diners celebrating the holiday at Willie Bird’s Restaurant, complete with all the trimmings.
For many, it’s like dining at home.
“You can’t go to many places where you feel like you’re at home, or at grandma’s house,” said Ann-Marie Hintermann, 39, a server at Willie Bird’s Restaurant for 18 years. “You feel like you’ve stepped back in time here.”
She and other longtime servers, like Cindy Clow, who beats out Hintermann’s employment by nearly 20 years, consider the regulars like friends, family even.
Many are senior citizens, many in their very advanced years.
“You talk about the elderly,” Benedetti said. “They come in here in wheelchairs and using walkers and canes. We have the parking and the accessibility, and pretty good food, too.”
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