WHY WE ARE CALLED BRASSERIE UNO
During a road trip through Sweden and Norway in the summer of 2018, I was thinking a lot about what to call the restaurant. I’d had lots of ideas but none of them worked, then one day the name came to me: Brasserie Uno. Uno was the name of my grandfather and naming the restaurant after him, pictured above in 1963, just felt right.
UNO AND THE RESTAURANT
Uno passed away in 2006 but memories of him are always with me, and now they are in the restaurant, too. My sister was given a metal Axevalla Pilsner sign from Uno – a small brewery in rural Sweden where Uno worked as a mechanic on the beer-processing machines in the 1950s – and she has been generous enough to loan it to me, where it now proudly hangs on the wall in the restaurant. A side-note here is that the word ‘brasserie’ means brewery in French – a happy coincidence and one that I considered a lot, as Brasserie Uno is in no way a typical ‘brasserie’.
At the front of the restaurant you can see a wooden crate that says ‘Axvalls’ on it – I was lucky enough to find this in the barn at my parents’ house in Sweden and Dad let me bring it to Zermatt. Finding the crate encouraged me to hunt around the house for more things that belonged to Uno and many of the objects in the restaurant either belonged to him and my grandmother, Majken, or were inspired by him. For example, Uno was a meticulous bookkeeper: he wrote down all his accounting using his trusty typewriter, a beautiful old relic which now lives on the counter by the door. I made the hanging wine rack from a pair of beaten up wooden skis I found in the barn – not sure they were Uno’s but he surely skied on something similar! And on the back wall is Uno’s clock, a wooden treasure he brought back from a trip to America in the 1960s. As a tribute to Uno, his picture now hangs on the wall near the stairs with a small inscribed memorial. As you go down the stairs, you will notice another memorial to a dear friend John Wilhelmsson – fondly known in Zermatt as Swedish John – who sadly died in an avalanche in 2006 in Zermatt. RIP John.
GOOD MEMORIES
While all of these things help to bring a homely feel to the restaurant, it’s the family meals with Uno that I remember the most – he loved his food and it was always a fun time whenever he was at the table. And that is my hope for you – that a little of Uno’s love for life lives on here at Brasserie Uno and that you enjoy good food and good times and leave with happy memories.
Andreas Alm, owner, Brasserie Uno
Me and my ‘morfar’ Uno playing a serious game of cards in the 1980s. We always played a game called Stop, betting with 10 cent pieces, which seemed like big money at the time. I’m sure he probably let me win.
