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.”

Hintermann said the rapport with diners of all ages is always friendly.

“It’s like we’re their therapists, but we serve them food,” she said.

And from turkey cutlets to the ground turkey Willie Burger to the Italian turkey sausage sandwich and the charbroiled turkey teriyaki steak, there’s enough turkey to go around. Even those who’ve overdosed on turkey can find something appealing, from salads to seafood, pasta to beef.

The long, 17-stool bar is a popular spot, where younger patrons often crowd together on Sundays for the signature Bloody Marys.

Everyone is amiable, bartender Zimmerman said, with never a punch or a brawl, even when the two TV screens switched from sports to election night coverage.

Even the turkey patriarch never tires of his favorite bird.

“Ah, no,” Benedetti recently said, taking some rare time off from November’s crazy-busy turkey-production schedule. “You can eat it so many ways, you never get tired of it. They’ve all got distinct flavors.”

He especially likes turkey scallopini, with tender breast meat sautéed with mushrooms in a marsala sauce.

His customers favor the classic open-faced hot turkey sandwich ($13.95), the most popular item on the extensive menu, followed closely by the roast turkey dinner ($19.95, soup and salad included) and the “light lunch” combo of half a turkey sandwich and soup or salad ($9.75).

“And they like them drumsticks, those roasted drumsticks,” Benedetti said. ($19.95 for the full dinner.)

The restaurant slogan is “Turkey Always and Turkey All Ways!” It delivers on its promise, with about 85 percent of the menu dedicated to turkey dishes.

The hard-working, ruddy-?faced Benedetti likes an occasional cocktail - vodka cranberry while chatting at the restaurant bar on a recent weekend - and always has a Dutch Master cigar at the ready, an admitted but enjoyable vice.

The farmer-entrepreneur-?businessman is emphatic, though, when he sees his physician.

“I tell my doctor I’m eating healthy,” he said, noting that his diet of farm-fresh, free-range turkey is lean protein, low in calories, carbohydrates and cholesterol.

Good for you and, he believes, there’s no tastier turkey around.

Guy Fieri featured Benedetti and his turkey restaurant and operations on Fieri’s national Food Network TV show, “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” bringing in a slew of new customers. Willie Bird Turkeys has supplied smoked varieties to the White House, and even Martha Stewart, the diva of domesticity, has sought out Benedetti’s birds.

What makes them so flavorful, so juicy, so popular not just at Thanksgiving but year-round?

“It’s the bugs,” Benedetti said with a grin. “They’re eating a lot of bugs.” The free-range birds also get top-quality feed and munch on grass and pebbles that help with digestion.

Plus, they work their muscles roaming around during their 13- to 19-week lifespan, improving skin texture and making them bustier, meatier and tastier overall; happier, too, Benedetti said.

Oliver Rodriguez, 42, a hiring coordinator for a local nonprofit, typically stops by the restaurant four times a week. The Santa Rosan said the appeal extends beyond the obvious, even topping all those tasty turkey options.

“It’s like a community here,” he said. “And the chicken wings are the best in town.”

Willie Bird’s Restaurant, 1150 Santa Rosa Ave., Santa Rosa, is open 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday. For information, call 542-0861 or visit williebirdsrestaurant.com. Takeout orders are available. Willie Bird Turkeys operates a retail store at 5350 Highway 12, Santa Rosa; call 545-2832 or visit williebird.com.

Contact Towns Correspondent Dianne Reber Hart at sonomatowns@gmail.com.