Bill Thompson, left, and his brother Rick, owners of Cavendish Game Birds, have bred a bigger quail that gourmet chefs seem to love.

Bill and Rick Thompson, co-owners of Cavendish Game Birds in Springfield, have spent 12 years breeding a better bird, one that is a full half-ounce larger than other quail on the market. This may not seem like much, but when the finished bird weighs less than five ounces, it can make a big difference to a chef. Especially when it's a celebrity chef.

"Wolfgang Puck is one of our biggest customers," says Bill, himself a former chef, who has turned to supplying his peers with a product he could only wish had been available when he was in the kitchen.

He rattles off a dozen more famous names and restaurants that serve Cavendish Game Birds quail, mostly on the West Coast but a few in Vermont.

"Knowing the chef end of the business has really helped us to raise a bird with a good finish," he says. By this he means slight streaks of fat under the skin, which will keep the bird tender while it cooks.

Both brothers have been intrigued with raising poultry since childhood, when Rick had a backyard flock of chickens, pigeons and pheasants in suburban New Jersey. "I would let them go free into the wild once they were full grown," he says, adding that it made them laugh to watch the birds scramble off into the woods. The boys' father was a sales manager for Nabisco, and both brothers knew from an early age that they would be in the food business.

Bill, older at 47, earned a chef degree at Johnson & Wales in Rhode Island, and worked at the Inn at Weathersfield when he first moved to Vermont. He left in 1994 to pursue his own restaurant business, purchasing the old Paddock Restaurant in Springfield. Built in the 1940s, it was an upscale eatery in its prime but had fallen on hard times due, in part, to the growth of the fast food chains in town. Bill thought he could resurrect it. "But it was just too big," he says. "We had 100 seats to fill every night, and it sat mostly empty during the week."

Yet Chef Bill knew that upscale restaurants always have some type of game bird on their menu, cycling through among pheasant, quail and duck. He was not pleased with the quality he was buying at the time and knew he could do better. So he started to raise pheasants, and once again, it was a backyard operation.

Rick, then a sales manager for an out-of-state food distributor, would visit Bill and take back some extra birds to his chef clients in Philadelphia. In 1991, Rick moved to Vermont and joined his brother in raising game birds at three locations in Cavendish, since scaled back to one. They now process more than 6,000 birds a week in the building that once housed the Paddock Restaurant, just off the Springfield exit on Interstate 91. The work is handled by eight employees, with both Bill and Rick pitching in.

The former restaurant is actually a large old red farmhouse with attached barn. It's country, all right: A tethered white goat stands on a tree stump in the front yard and two old Labs greet visitors. And it's rustic inside, with hand-hewn barn beams and dark wood. "This used to be the main dining room," says Bill, with a sweeping gesture. It is now used as the office, with a picture window into the processing facility. "We created the kitchen inside the main structure," he continues. "It's a box inside a box." In the kitchen are stainless steel sinks, long chopping tables and several machines to prepare and vacuum-pack the birds.

"Quail are so much easier to grow than pheasants," says Bill, wearing a rubber apron, rubber boots and burgundy wool cap that might pass him off as a Gloucester fisherman. He says he was nothing but relieved when he gave up pheasants and concentrated on the quail. "They are a lot less skittish and take up less space."

To raise a quail from egg to plate takes only six weeks, and – no surprise here – it all starts with the egg. Breeding is more important than feeding when it comes to providing plump birds. "We saw an advertisement in the back of one of our poultry magazines advertising jumbo quail grown in Texas," says Bill. The breed, he says, was the result of research at Texas A&M University. The brothers bought eggs, raised a flock and selected the best for breeding.

Cavendish Game Birds now maintains 3,000 breeding hens, which lay close to 12,000 tiny eggs each week. Most are put into incubators, while the rest are sold as garnish to chefs. Between 8,000 and 9,000 quail hatch every week, each about the size of a fluffy Ping-Pong ball. The chicks grow in one large heated room. "They are very social," notes Rick. "Unlike pheasants, which can be temperamental and need to be outside, they don't go through any stress."

At 6 weeks, the largest quail are brought to the factory. At this stage, they are still small enough to fit into the palm of a hand. The birds are killed, the feathers removed, and the giblets and bones sold to become packaged dog food.

Once cleaned, a quail is shaped like a miniature chicken that you might find at the grocery store. But "it doesn't taste like chicken or turkey," says Bill, who is full of recipes for how to prepare the delicate birds. His favorite is to season with salt, pepper and fresh rosemary; sear in hot oil for five minutes to brown; cover with a lid and cook for five minutes on the stovetop. Stuffing the birds with cornbread and cranberries can heighten the flavor and fills them out a bit on the plate. What would Wolfgang do? "He'd probably soak them in a marinade, then cook them hot and fast on a char broiler and finish with mushroom sauce," says Bill.

Quail cost $5 each ($3.50 wholesale to chefs), and a diner will want one or two per serving. Shipping costs are roughly $25 per box. Local customers can telephone (802) 885-5339 to work out a less-costly delivery or pickup. For more information, including recipes, customers can check VermontQuail.com.



Ellen Ecker Ogden writes about food, chefs and restaurants for Vermont Sunday Magazine from Manchester Village. Her latest cookbook is titled "From the Cook's Garden."