Bono shares food memories from early life, recalls bringing politicians together to break bread, and even sings Amazing Grace.

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0:48That's why over 200 ,000 happy customers have made the switch. Upgrade your space today. Visit washablesofas.com now and bring home a sofa made for life. That's washablesofas.com. Offers are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply. You are listening to Ruthie's Table 4 in partnership with Moncler. In his compelling and moving memoir, Stories of Surrender, Bono writes about his father Brendan, a man who once silenced his local pub in Dalkey, Dublin, singing The Way We Were. Today, we're together to talk about the way we were and the way we are. Like everyone else, I know Bono through U2, his fight for social justice with his one campaign and Red, his philanthropy, his strong values, his vision.

1:39I also know him as family. One of the best days we've had in the River Cafe was with Ali, his wife, his children and friends, celebrating the birthday he shares with one of my best friends, his daughter Jordan. It was a lunch you wanted to go on forever, and in a way it did. Lunch became sunset, sunset turned into starry skies, and when we left at midnight, the restaurant was empty. Fifteen years ago, staying in the home of Bono's best friend Patty McKillen, I injured my back, and for a week, the only people I met were Irish. The warmth, the laughter, the music, the kindness was so overwhelming.

2:21Even with the pain, I wanted it to last forever too. Today, Bono and I are going to talk about family, food, music, memories and more. The way we were, the way we are and the way we want to be. Wow, wow. There we go. And I'm very humbled by your writing. Most people know you for your cooking, for the River Cafe, but your community know you for, and you may be even more famous in your community, for friendship. And these love letters that start your podcasts, few of us deserve them, but I'm taking them anyway. Do you know that song, The Way We Were? I most certainly do. I know it. My father used to sing it.

3:07But I prefer The Way We Are. and I love the way we are together. This is about you, not about me, but remember? Memories like the corner of my mind. The other one my father used to sing was For the Good Times. Why don't you just bring all the aunties and uncles to me in tears because I think it's the line I'll get along, you'll find another. I'll get along, you'll find another. but this old world keeps on turning. Let's forget something, something. Is it? I think it might be written by Chris Christopherson. Yeah, Chris Christopherson could write them. So what was the food like when you were growing up?

3:55What did you have? Do you have memories of your kitchen and in your home? Do you remember your mother cooking? I can remember the kitchen very well. Sadly, I don't have many memories of my mother, cooking or otherwise. One of the reasons I wrote Surrender was to somehow sort of drag some of those memories out of the river of silence that engulfed our house. Because after my mother died, we just didn't speak her name. So it's hard when you do that to recall these things. And you've heard of kitchen sink dramas, haven't you? We certainly had kitchen table dramas. What were they? Three men arguing a lot because the woman of the house was gone.

4:43And I remember my relationship with food changed. I mean, really changed. In what way? Tell me how it changed. I just saw it as kind of fuel, just something to get done. I took no pleasure in it. I remember, do you know what Cadbury's smash is? Would you even know that? We call it, actually, can I read you from my book, what I wrote myself? I would love you to. Yeah, I'd love that. Okay. After Iris died, 10 Cedarwood Road stopped being a home. It's just a house. Most days I'd return to it from Mount Temple holding a tin of meat, a tin of beans, and a packet of Cadbury's Smash. Cadbury's Smash was astronaut food.

5:29but eating it did not make me feel like David Bowie's Starman or Elton's Rocketman. In fact, eating it was not a lot like eating at all, but at least it was easy. You just put boiling water on these little dry pellets and they shape-shifted into mashed potato. I'd add them to the same pot in which I just cooked the tinned beans and the tinned meat, and I ate my dinner out of the pot sitting in front of the color TV, even though this was a particularly black and white thing to do. I don't enjoy cooking or ordering food, which way go back to having to cook my own meals as a teenager. That then was food was just fuel.

6:11We used to buy a cheap fizzy drink called Cadet Orange because it had enough sugar to keep you going, but was so foul, you wouldn't want anything else down your throat for hours. We drank it after I'd spent my food money on something more important, like Alice Cooper's 45 Hello Hooray, for example. Now, then, the good fortune for my father, Bob, Norman, and I was that Ten Seedwood Road was just two miles from the end of Runway 2 where my brother Norman worked for the company Cara in Aer Lingus. And he had talked the company into allowing him to bring home the surplus airline food prepared for airline as passengers.

6:56The meals were sometimes still warm when he carried them in in their tin boxes into our kitchen to be heated in the oven for 23 minutes at 185 degrees Celsius. This was highly exotic fare, gammon steak and pineapple, an Italian dish called lasagna, or one where rice was no longer a milk pudding, but a savory experience with peas. I told Norman, this is the worst dessert I've ever had. It's not dessert. And by the way, half the world eats rice every day. Norman knew stuff other people didn't. Imagine eating rice pudding as your main meal every day. If my father and I were proud that Norman had removed the need for us to buy groceries or even have to cook, after six months, the aftertaste of tin was all we could remember.

7:48Secretly at night, I took to eating cornflakes with cold milk instead of the airline food. I thought salvation had arrived in the form of another culinary miracle, this time at Mount Temple Comprehensive, when the end of the lunchbox era was announced and the age of school dinners dawned. Imagine the fanfare of trumpets and cheering at assembly. That's how excited we all were. But I was punching the air only briefly. The school dinners, the headmaster, Mr. Medleycott explained, would not be cooked in the school canteen. It wasn't big enough. Instead, they would be arriving by van in tin boxes from Dublin Airport.

8:30They would be easy, he announced proudly, at 185 degrees for 23 minutes in new ovens the school board had paid for. I'd never been on an airplane, but already my romance with flying was over. Airplane food for lunch, airplane food for tea, was more than any apprentice rock star could handle. In time, the apprentice with his band would take to the skies, and on those early Erlingas flights, I would look out of the small window and try to see Cedarwood Road. As I finally left this small town and small island and rose above these flat fields, this dull suburbia, my mind filled with memories of the phone box on the street teenagers with broken hearts and broken bottles, sweet and sour neighbors, and the vibrant branches of the cherry blossom tree between our house at number 10 and the Rowans at number 5, at which point the air hostess would arrive and place one of those little trays right in front of me.

9:33so I had airplane food for lunch airplane food for tea and supper and then I became a joined a band where of course we judge entire civilizations by the quality of room service but on the plane the same meal and indeed I'd never heard of pasta I'd never heard of lasagna and rice was something that came out of a tin on a very special occasion, and it was called rice pudding. Later, you know, with Ali, because she worked, we had no dough, so she worked, and I would try to cook for her, but I just wasn't able to really, and I would try, and she then made it complicated. She became a vegetarian, and I'm like, oh, God, what do I do?

10:27Nuts and berries, you know? And I'm like, and I do recall coming home on the weekend and she was, she was cooking. And I remember getting this beautiful smell of beef. I thought, oh my God, she's cooking beef for me and she's vegetarian. This is how amazing. And I walked in, I said, what are you cooking? She said, that's not for us. That's the dog's dinner. That's a few bones actually picked out from the butchers. It's a dog. And I was like, hold on, it smells so good. And I was like, look, let me, and I ate it. You ate the dog's dinner. You ate the dog's dinner. I ate the kids. I'm sure Jordan has told you, yeah, my dad, he ate the dog's dinner once.

11:11But you know what she did tell me? She told me that you met Ali so young that Ali's mother, her nan, she always refers to her nan, cooked for you. And also now when Eli comes back from a tour or gig, that she always makes him bread. So there is a kind of sense of food is love in that family of her mother, her grandmother, and your mother-in-law cooking then and cooking now as a source of comfort and taking care of somebody to make bread is quite something. Well, Joy is her name. She's 92 tomorrow. And she can touch her toes. There's no pain in her body. She is sharp and funny. And as brilliant as she was, when she took me in age 16, 17, I started to turn up.

12:06I mean, Ali called me the stray dog because I would always turn up at my mate's house at mealtimes. Yeah, I heard that. I heard that. And I would turn up and Joy would cook for me. And I felt something from the food. It's like that Waterford Chocolate book, you know. I really felt something from her cooking. And, yeah, I felt it from your cooking, not just in the restaurant but in your place. People speak, it's a language, and it is for me the essence of being spoiled. And you are exactly right. I don't stop much to think about any accomplishments because I'm always thinking about what we haven't accomplished.

12:56But if I do stop, it is with food and wine. And I try to give thanks. I try to say a grace. I do thank God. And it dawns on me, wow. I used to eat cornflakes for my main meal to dodge the airline food. And now I get to eat in this restaurant. or now I have, you know, somebody like Noni Favaro cook for me who's, you know, I followed her around. We followed her around. And from her I learned to love fish. I never ate fish. I thought, you know, in Ireland we have a strange relationship with fish. We're surrounded by it. We're an island. But fish on Fridays was a sort of penance. So I think it ruined fish for a lot of people I loved, and this might upset you I loved smoked cod and chips that you got in the chipper Why would that bother me?

14:01If it's fresh fish and it's smoked and it tastes good Oh, so beautiful In fact, there's some Italian families they came to Ireland they're all from the same place in Italy I think And so our version of fast food in Ireland when I was growing up wasn't, it was kind of wonderful. I haven't mentioned my involvement in Mr. Pussy's Cafe Deluxe, but my brother Norman and my great mate from Cedarwood Road, Gavin Friday, opened up a sort of burlesque cafe in Dublin called Mr. Pussy's Cafe Deluxe. And Mr. Pussy was a drag act. Alan Almsby was his name. It's wonderful. And in Mr. Pussy's Café Deluxe, and that really was its name, they had fish and chips and caviar.

14:58And because it was an after-hours club, we used to have red and white tea on the menu. So it was red and white wine served in teapots because we didn't have that license. I probably shouldn't say that. I see. No, we shouldn't say that. They might come and find you. You chose, of all my recipes, of 38 years of recipes, you chose a recipe which I was totally unsurprised about, which was a potato, tomato, and green bean salad. And, you know, when your friend Patty McKillen comes to the River Cafe and we know he's coming, we always have extra potatoes. And I was going to ask you, do you always have to have potatoes as well?

15:32What is it with the Irish in potatoes? Let me just say this to you, Ruthie Rogers. I got this this recipe was selected suggested for me potato green bean tomato no no way no I think it is interesting that for Paddy McKillen he talks about every day he came home from school and his grandmother made him a baked potato and I know about potatoes in Ireland would you like to tell me seriously about about the famine no no okay I don't want to talk about famine. The potatoes are doing great now. So are the Irish. I just want to use the podcast. I want to use the podcast to get a message to all the Irish listeners you have all over the world just to let them know that the potatoes are fine now.

16:24They can come home, all right? We love potatoes. The potatoes are fine. But I just want to say to all the Irish who are listening here that I rarely, I personally rarely have a meal without potatoes because I love potatoes. Even I can't say I love more than pasta, but I do love potatoes. But yes, potatoes would be the pasta of Ireland. Let's call it that. Yeah, let's call it that. But single crop dependency turns out to be not a good idea if you're being managed by the British. So there. Okay. So there you go.

16:59An open kitchen in the River Cafe means we as chefs are able to talk to our guests dining in the restaurant. And now we're bringing that same ethos to our podcast. A question and answer episode with me and our two executive chefs. Send a voice note with your question to questions at rivercafe.co.uk and you might just be our next great guest on Ruthie's Table 4.

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18:47When you left home, when you left your house, when you left this environment of school, And did you have any experience of eating other kind of food when you traveled? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. See, we were given the great gift of a manager who loved food and wine as much as he loved music. And I remember as kids, you know, because we're 20, we're driving up and down the motorway in the UK. And do you know what a per diem is, Ruthie? Yes. A per diem. It sounds like a sort of novene or something, and it is a kind of one. Record companies used to give you per diems so you could stay in a hotel if you were playing, you know, Manchester or Newcastle or Leeds or whatever.

19:36But we wouldn't stay in the hotel. We'd drive back after the show and save up our per diems so that Paul could take us out for one really good meal on the weekends. Now, it might be in Poonz of Soho. It could be Chinese. Yeah, yeah. But over the years, yeah, we would go to some great places. And we weren't really appreciative early on. We'd sort of slag him off. But, you know, he'd be talking about this fellow in France. We'd think of some composer, sort of indie guy we hadn't heard of, called Paul Bacuse, and then discover he was a chef. And that we booked three dates in Lyon because our manager wanted to eat in Paul Bacusa's restaurant.

20:24So that was our experience, is we learned through this magnificent man about food and wine. When I talked to Paul McCartney about food and wine, and he said that he didn't know what it was. When he and John Lennon went to Paris, they had a bit of money from John's aunt. I think she gave them a tiny bit of money. So they ate out and they had wine. And he thought wine was just the most disgusting drink because they had the cheapest, cheapest, cheapest wine that they could possibly afford. And it was only when Brian Epstein took them to L 'Etoile, which is this great restaurant, and took them and gave them, like your manager, gave them great food and wonderful wine that they thought, wow, this is what food and wine can be like.

21:18Being able to access food was somehow a measure of the work that they had done that allowed them to do that. I think that's right and I mean early on we would you know this was not very punk rock or post punk activity you're supposed to be depressed and Paul wasn't he was anything great that happened for our band if we'd have a hit record somewhere or you know he would go to find a great restaurant and I realised that I then I supposed to turned those experiences into, they became magical ones for me because I so loved to listen to him talk. Occasionally I'd go back into my sort of more macho sort of North Dublin side or me and Larry would look at them talking.

22:13Paul McGuinness was very influenced by the manager of Horselips, who his name was Michael Deeney, and he went to Oxford. And his brother became, I think, the high sheriff or whatever you call it, of Belfast, a Catholic, first Catholic to take that position. And I do remember he and Paul talking about this particular wine and how big it was. And I was with the band and I just decided I'd speak up for the band. I said, I'm 22 or whatever, 23. and I said, oh, maybe, maybe, Michael, you might explain exactly, like, what is a, you might tell the band, what's a big wine? A big wine. And Michael Dini just went, Bono, it would blow your f***ing head off.

23:03And it was kind of comedic way to put us in our place, but in truth, we were students at the feet of these great professors And indeed, it's through Paul that I discovered the River Cafe. When you're performing, do you eat before you go on stage? Would you eat after? Or do you think about, I mean, I remember Posh Spice said that she came to her diet because she had to get up on stage and perform. And she found the kind of food that could make her sing and dance for three hours. That was a kind of almost like an athlete, what she would eat before going on stage. Do you do that when you have a concert?

23:45Do you think about what you're going to eat before or after? Well, it's changed. I mean, I used to ignore all those rules in our 30s, and you can see some of the results of it and some of our live shows, which would be very joyous occasions. But if you saw a big red Irish face, that's because the night before we might have gone out. I've only twice had alcohol before I went on stage. Once there was a wedding. Another one was my father put me to bed the night before and had a mad hangover in Paris. What year was that? Do you know what year was that? How old were you? That was in the late 90s, and it was a wonderful memory of my father, Bob.

24:37But after that, you can't sing if you drink. At least you can't sing. I can't sing. Maybe I should just say that. And tenors, which I was pretending to be at the time, my father used to say, you're a baritone. Who thinks he's a tenor? Which is a very accurate description of me on all fronts. But actually, if you sing those big notes, which U2 loves the opera of those big notes, you sort of have to be careful what you eat and what you drink. And so I would eat very simply before a concert. Well, you also have had access to power to people who really can make big decisions. And did you have a meal with George Bush in the White House or did you have, you know, did you ever have lunch with the Pope?

25:33Or do you have, when you had access to that kind of world, having a meal perhaps with somebody who was not accessible to many of us, was that over food? Well, the thing that started with Live Aid 40 years ago was a sort of, it was charity. But it started to change in its direction of travel toward justice. And so the Drop the Debt campaign was really about economic slavery. We were responding to Desmond Tutu, to Mandela, and all going to work to try and make a more horizontal relationship with the continent of Africa rather than this vertical one, which is the donor and recipient, as it's known, in the aid industry.

26:26So as part of that, we had to get to know politics. and I used to spend I spent a lot of time in capitals but particularly in Washington DC getting to know not just you know the the principles as they were called these senators congressmen or cabinet members secretaries of state presidents whatever but actually they're chiefs of staff so I used to go drinking with the chiefs of staff I'd say let me spend time with the chiefs of staff because they're really the ones that on Monday morning, they're going to be talking to their principal. And let's see if we can get people together. What we used to do in DC was Bobby Shriver's idea was to get people into a restaurant.

27:19It was an Italian restaurant. And we used to get people from across the aisle. His mother, Eunice Shriver, set up the Special Olympics and his father said of the Peace Corps Kennedy. But so you'd have some of those kind of highfalutin people. But you just have also, you know, really dogged ideologues from both parties in America, Democrats and Republicans, fighting it out at the table, but breaking bread and drinking wine. You can't do that anymore. There's, I think, a$20 limit. So it's a pizza is about what you can get now. But I remember those arguments. I remember, who is it? John Kasich, who ran for president on the Republican side.

28:04I remember a stand-up argument with him and Larry Summers, who is the then Treasury Secretary. And I remember just looking, going, wow, this peacemaking stuff isn't going well for me. But I learned so much. And I learned about the process, I suppose, the sausage-making of it all. and I ended up with more respect for these for these people who were away from their families a lot and in other areas of of endeavor commerce they'd probably be very successful and even though I didn't agree with a lot of their politics I learned by listening and I'm trying to listen more, especially in the cracked politics that we have now.

28:53You were talking about meals I had with these kinds of heads of state. I do remember having to eat humble pie with George Bush, because I'd slagged them off. Is that a dish? Is humble pie a dish? Did you have that for dessert? Was that like apple pie or raspberry pie? You had humble pie. It's a dish Irish people don't like to eat. But I had gone in and I'd had a meeting with him. I was just very sort of cross because he had said that we were going to get these AIDS drugs to people on bicycles and motorcycles, whatever it takes, to the furthest reaches, whatever. And I'd said, if you can get Guinness to the rural poor, if you can get Coca-Cola, we can get these life-saving drugs.

29:41And I said, Mr. President, paint them red, white, and blue if you want. These will be the best advertisements for America ever. So eventually, after an extraordinary campaign with a lot of people involved from different sides of the fence, he'd agreed, announced it. And then I'd gone in and said, it's not happening. It's not happening. And eventually it did. It's 26 million people, actually, since then, because Barack Obama followed through. and I went in and I'd been banging. I remember I was banging on the table of the president of the United States. He got, hey, hey, I am the president, okay?

30:21I am the president. I'll remind you. I'll just remind you of that. A little respect here. And he was funny too, George Bush. He had a great, great sense of humor. Yeah, so I remember that. Anyway, I remember he said, sit down, have some lunch. Let's talk about whatever. Do you remember what you ate? Chicken. Chicken. And then... Did you eat with Barack Obama? Yeah, yeah. A few times, a few times. But again, I would just say, and Obama was an extraordinary man for so many reasons. But one of the more extraordinary reasons is that even though George Bush had started this PEPFAR, which is the president's emergency plan for AIDS relief, Barack Obama carried it on in fact put more American taxpayers money into it even than President Bush had and never asked for recognition and it was kind of amazing but I do remember once maybe this is okay to tell the story because everyone knows now I remember sitting with Alicia Keys myself and Barack Obama having lunch and I brought him a guitar and I ended up, I played, I don't know, something like something simple on the guitar.