As winter comes into full swing, there is nothing more enticing than a beautifully cooked bird to set the appetite of patrons alight.

The most common bird eaten in Aus tralia is chicken, with 35kilograms of the meat consumed by Australians each year. Yet despite its popularity, (beef is slightly above chicken at 36kg per year according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics) chicken fails to make it on many of Aus tralia’s top restaurant menus.

Instead many restaurants opt for some thing more unusual, with duck, squab, quail and pheasant some of the game birds likely to make appearances on their menus during the cooler months.

“Chicken does not sell very well, not in these sorts of restaurants. Other poultry does better, such as quail and duck,” says Robert Castellani, chef at Melbourne’s Donovans restaurant.“Chicken has been maligned, because people think ‘‘it’s just chicken; I can do this at home’ so sales are not that good. If people are going out, they want something like duck, it’s more of a special occasion dish.”

Donovans has duck on the menu regu larly, in various forms, and also pheasant or quail. “We cook duck in the Western style of cooking, not the Asian style. We have several ways of cooking it. We have a roast duck for two people; or sometimes cook duck legs in confit.”

Castellani has recently put pheasant on the menu as a special—they only come into season in late April and generally go through until late August. “The pheasants we get come from Olson Game Birds, lo cated at Swan Hill in northern Victoria, sold through Glenloth Game, they are corn fed and excellent quality, but they are very expensive.”

Like duck, Castellani uses the whole pheasant—in sausages, soups, stocks and more, to ensure none of the valuable prod ucts is wasted.

One of the big issues surrounding bird farming at the moment is free range and organic practices. Like other industries, there is no steadfast rule as to what is free range, and many people still don’t under stand the differences.

“If you eat a free range chicken, you think that the chicken is tough, as you have to use your teeth to eat it, but this is because the chicken has been working, whereas if you eat the chicken from a cage, the chick en muscles are soft,” says Castellani.

The restaurant uses Glenloth Game free range chicken and Castellani says the chicken is of excellent quality, “you can taste the difference”.

While free range generally refers to the conditions the birds are raised in, organic refers to their diet and environmental influ ences. Certified organic products are grown and processed without the use of synthetic chemicals, fertilisers, or Genetically Modi fied Products (GMOs), however, some or ganic food is not grown free range.

Fellow advocate of free range chicken is owner and chef of two hat Sydney restau rant Bistro Ortolan, Paul McGrath.

The suburban restaurant has been wow ing its loyal dining following for the past three years with its French cuisine.

Like Castellani, McGrath uses only high quality free range chicken on his French in fluenced menu and sources his products from from Burrawong Farm, in northern New South Wales. “Chicken has its mo ments,” says McGrath. “We are selling more of it at the moment, but that’s pos sibly because we are selling less pork, and chicken is the other white meat. People that that would normally choose pork, are steering away from it.”

While none of his customers suggest why they’ve are not choosing pork, Mc Grath believes it’s perhaps related to the recent swine flu scare. “The chicken is more expensive than the pork, so it’s not an economic choice,” he says.

McGrath has had Burrawong chicken on the menu for about four months and has previously used it on the menu, when he didn’t have duck.

McGrath also has pheasant and squab, as specials, but says supply is too sporadic to have them on the menu permanently. However, when it is on the menu, “they are selling very well, squab in particular”.

McGrath says when he has duck on his menu it also sells very well. Like the chick en it is from Burrawong farm. “It’s a bit more expensive than the chicken, but peo ple still go for it. Duck will always sell.”

In fact, his entrée of duck and chicken liver parfait is one of his best selling items.

It’s not just chefs that are drawn to free range chickens, a recent survey by Newspoll found three in five adults now eat free range chicken and one in five choose it regularly. However, according to the Australian Chicken Meat Federation only four per cent of the poultry industry is raised free range.

Burrawong Farm owner, Grant Jolliffe, says there is a lot of confusion surround ing the term free range, and has instead de cided to call his birds pasture fed. “The term free range has become clichéd and thrown around too much,” says Jolliffe.

Birds at Burrawong roam around 20 metre by 50 metre paddocks, with sheds on the paddocks designed to give the birds protection from the elements. The birds feed during daylight hours and don’t have lights in their enclosures. During winter months, when there is less daylight, the birds grow slower and require an extra week to reach optimum weight.

Another key aspect to the farm is the onsite processing plant, where the animals are stunned and then cooled. “It means the birds aren’t travelling to be slaughtered and end up less stressed,” says Jolliffe.

As part of this, Jolliffe’s birds are not put in chiller tubs, like many other com mercial chooks are. Jolliffe says the chiller tubs are used to cool the bird quickly af ter slaughter and generally include some chlorine in them. By not doing this Joliffe claims his birds are as close to organic as they can be, with chlorine the only chem ical used at the farm for cleaning purpos es. “We want to get the animals back to their original way of life,” he says.

Jolliffe’s ducks are also becoming a hit with the hospitality industry. The birds, like the chickens, are given room to roam on the farm. Jolliffe says this gives them an optimal fat to meat ratio, particularly popular with Asian restaurants.

Depending on who has ordered ducks, Jolliffe normally processes half the ducks at seven weeks and the other half at eight weeks, with average weight being 1.9kg, but again it depends on the time of year.

“The chickens do better in summer, and the ducks do better in winter, because its cooler and they need more food.”

On the other side of the free range in dustry is Lilydale Farm, which supplies a majority of free range chickens to Wool worths and Coles supermarkets and has recently begun pushing into the foodsrvice market. At present only six to eight per cent of its chicken is used in foodservice.

Lilydale marketing manager, Celia Camilleri-Pace, says while the brand is new to the industry, they are seeing an in crease in demand as more customers pre fer free range chicken. “The demand from consumers for free range chicken contin ues to grow with more consumers buying free range chicken now then they were two years ago.”

Both Burrawong and Lilydale are used by some of Sydney’s top restaurants in cluding Rockpool, China Doll, Glass and Longrain.

Lilydale chickens meet the standards set by Free Range Egg and Poultry Australia and are accredited by FREPA, says Camil leri-Pace.

Both farms sell their chickens whole or in pieces, but surprisingly, while Sydney restaurants order the entire bird, Brisbane restaurants prefer to have cuts, says Jolliffe.

“Our distributor in Brisbane, Food and Wine Concepts, mainly gets orders for cuts of the birds, such as chicken kiev supreme, (breast of chicken to be cut with the wing bone) or Marylands (cut of chicken with the leg attached to the breast piece) but he is getting a bit more demand for the whole bird at markets.”

Brisbane Sofitel Brisbane executive chef, Patrice Falantin, uses a variety of poultry for the hotels various restaurants includ ing the fine diner Thyme and bistro Whistlestop Bar.

Falantin uses chicken, ducks, quail and more throughout the hotel’s many menus, but says chicken is particularly important. “Chicken is the third most eaten meat af ter beef and fish,” says Falantin. Duck is also popular across the hotel, although not as a main, mainly as an entrée he says.

The French born chef is not a fan of the ducks available in Australia. “Duck here is very lean, compared to France. The breed of duck is different,” he says. “I think the cooler climate in France makes the ducks eat more and get fatter.”

At Sydney hot spot Dank Street Depot, chef and owner Jared Ingersoll, is going one step further than specials of game birds, he’s devoting an entire one of his special produce dinners to the birds as part of his monthly producer dinners. The menu at the dinner on August 27 includes dishes like squab cooked in master stock then fried and finished with a mandarin sauce; pot roasted Guinea fowl with buttered savoy cabbage and celeriac puree; sherry poached duck wing with mustard crumbs and pick led cauliflower; spiced and roasted crown of duck wtih spiced quince; ‘pot au feu’ of pheasant with mustard fruits, potato and parsley; and confit of quail legs with hon ey, walnuts and witlof.

“Game birds have big flavours, warm ing taste; they make a nice dish for the cooler months,” says Ingersoll.

While Dank Street Depot has chicken and duck on the menu all the time, Inger soll says the chicken is popular, but not as a main. However, duck, despite it being one of his pricier dishes, routinely does very well. Ingersoll says he’s able to count er the higher expense of duck by using the entire bird. “The parts we use in soups, stuffing or sauces subsidises the breast meat of the birds,” he says.

While using the whole bird is more eco nomical, he concedes it does require more work, “they are very labour intensive, but then I enjoy cooking, it’s what I do”.