Bono pops into eat at Culpeper restaurant

The world’s biggest rock star dropped by downtown Culpeper last Thursday for an impromptu late lunch overlooking East Street. The absolute lack of fanfare surrounding the incident was almost as incredible as his fleeting appearance.

Still, when Bono comes to town, someone’s bound to notice, and the staff at Hazel River Inn Restaurant sure did.

“When he walked in the door, he had that look about him,” said Heather Frankel of Culpeper, the waitress who served the U2 front man on the back deck of the East Davis Street eatery.

“He had the jeans, the blue polo shirt, he had his sunglasses on — it was Bono.”

Yet if it wasn’t for the photos she and others hastily snapped with the Grammy Award winner before he headed down U.S. 29 for the big U2 show that night in Charlottesville, the whole thing could have just been chalked up as another urban legend.

But no, Bono, a native Dubliner, found what he was looking for, food-wise, at the Hazel River Inn Restaurant, a historic building whose earliest portion dates to the 1790s.

It’s been a tobacco warehouse, stable and Civil War jail — now add Bono pit stop to the list.

He arrived on Davis Street around 3:15 p.m. in a black SUV with several female associates, a driver and a bodyguard, said Kat Wilsey, a longtime employee of the restaurant. She took their reservation earlier in the day from a woman who gave the name McMinnis.

Sounds Irish enough, but no one had any idea Bono would be showing up. And no one knows what brought him to Culpeper.

The original reservation was for an hour earlier, but the woman riding with Bono called back several times to reschedule, said Wilsey. They were en route from Washington, D.C., where U2 did a show last Tuesday as part of its 360-Degree Tour.

Frankel took the final call and their order, reciting the phone highlights of the casual fine dining menu.

“I put the order in, got it going, and they walk in the door,” she said. “Bono was probably the third or fourth person through the door — I was trying to stay chill.”

Frankel seated the party outside on that beautiful day, then went looking for her co-worker.

“I said, ‘Kat, that guy outside looks just like Bono.’”

To make sure, they pulled up pictures on her iPod. When Wilsey heard him talk with his slight Irish brogue, they knew for sure — it was him all right.

The girls of Hazel River did not panic in the face of celebrity, however, and instead chose to leave Bono to his lunch.

“We kept it low key,” said Wilsey, “because I know I wouldn’t want to be bombarded if I just sat down to eat.”

What did Bono eat?

Frankel promptly returned outside to serve the party its food, which she said Bono and friends all shared, eating from each other’s plates.

They had smoked salmon, jumbo wedge salad, crab cakes, chicken Caesar salad, Greek salad and an applewood chicken sandwich with no bread. Everyone drank water.

Frankel kept her distance too.

“It was very low key,” she said, noting that Bono was very pleasant to wait on.

Yet she could tell they were in a bit of a rush. U2 took the stage in Charlottesville — about 45 miles away — just after 9 p.m. that night.

Frankel said Bono’s party cleaned their plates in no time, and though she didn’t speak directly to the superstar she heard him remark favorably on his surroundings.

“He loved the area where he was sitting out back — he thought it was quaint — and was saying how he was floored by how beautiful the weather was,” Frankel said.

She would have loved to show him The Pub, she said of the downstairs music venue where at least one local band has been known to play U2 covers, but time escaped her.

While they were eating, Wilsey slipped across the street to The Purple Parrot to let her friend Daphne Ryczko in on their special guest.

Ryczko, owner of the gift shop, said she thought Kat was drunk.

“Bono is not in that restaurant,” she said she told Wilsey. “That’s just stupid.”

Finally convinced otherwise, Ryczko walked across the street for a closer look.

“I parked behind the restaurant. He was on the back deck, and my car’s back there so we’re pretending like we’re going down to get something out of my car,” she said. “And it was him.”

Not usually impressed by celebrities, Ryczko made an exception for Bono, known worldwide for his charity.

“There’s something about him that’s just larger than life,” she said. “I think a lot of it is the good work that he does — he brings a lot of light onto issues that most people with money don’t even care about.”

Above-average tip
As for what kind of money he dropped at the Hazel River Inn, the party’s check was $147 and some change, said Frankel, and they left her a 20 percent tip.

Leaving the restaurant around 4 p.m., Bono paused for some photographs with the handful of local ladies who witnessed his unannounced stop in this small town — though he probably didn’t have much of a choice, as they were all waiting for him on the sidewalk when he finished using the restroom.

Everyone agreed they needed physical proof that Bono actually stopped in Culpeper; otherwise, no one would believe it.

“He was really cool,” said Ryczko. “He shook everybody’s hand and introduced himself and was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, everybody get in the picture.’ One of the guys with him took my camera, so there you go — that’s how we got the picture.”

Frankel got in on one of the last shots, and that’s when Bono threw his arm around her. She said he smelled nice.

Bono autographed a menu and was on his way.

“It was one of those things that just sort of happened and then it was over,” said Ryczko.

Karen Stogbuchner, who owns the Hazel River Inn Restaurant and The Pub with her husband Pete, the chef, got left out.

“We missed the whole damn thing,” she said.

That’s because they were in Charlottesville for a doctor’s appointment. The couple likely passed Bono on U.S. 29 on the way back.

“We were trying to get out of Charlottesville so we wouldn’t get stuck in traffic,” Stogbuchner said of the night’s U2 concert, which attracted some 60,000 fans.

She had no idea how Bono and friends found the Hazel River Inn Restaurant, but said they obviously had looked up Culpeper.

“It was pretty exciting,” Stogbuchner said. “They all said Bono was really nice.”

Look for the framed menu with his autograph on it hanging in the Hazel River Inn Restaurant lobby soon, along with the guest check and photos to prove he was here.

No word from the handlers

U2’s North American publicity folks did not respond to requests for a comment about Bono’s jaunt into Culpeper. He and his band are a little bit busy, though, having done 36 shows since U2 began touring the globe June 30 in Barcelona, Spain.

The tour marks the band’s release earlier this year of its 13th studio album, “No Line on the Horizon.” The four-man group, which formed 30 years ago in Ireland, has 22 Grammys, more than any other band.

U2 played Atlanta Tuesday night and plays Tampa Friday. The North American U2-360 tour wraps up Oct. 28 in Vancouver, but the band has announced numerous new tour dates in Europe starting in August 2010.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” Bono shouted to the Charlottesville crowd at the University of Virginia’s Scott Stadium last Thursday night, giving a nod to hometown boy Thomas Jefferson. “This a big, big night on campus, we understand — for us too.”

And to think he got his nourishment in Culpeper.