An Italian Affair in Switzerland: Le Sirenuse Franco’s Bar Pops Up at The Kulm Hotel in St. Moritz 

For six months out of the year, the seaside hideaway Le Sirenuse plays host to Positano’s masses of sun-seeking holidaymakers. For the remaining half of the year, the Sersale family, proprietors of the storied Italian resort, make their way around the world, from Rome to London to Miami to St. Moritz, Switzerland. Antonio and Carla Sersale and their two sons, Aldo and Francesco, spend the winter season exploring the slopes and indulging in the myriad activities the town has to offer—from head-first rides down the Cresta Run to cross country skiing (sometimes attached to the back of a vintage automobile) to enjoying the handful of grand hotels that first put the town on the map. 

Among these grand hotels is The Kulm. Opened in 1856, it welcomes a clutch of St. Moritz loyalists who flock to the property from all corners of the globe. They converge in the social hubs like the hotel lobby and piano bar, enveloped in yellow chintz wallpaper, and the nearby Kulm Country Club, a sleek, modern take on a mountain chalet complete with an ice skating rink. Here, la dolce vita and alpine excess converged to celebrate the arrival of Franco’s Bar at The Kulm Country Club, a month-long pop-up of the beloved watering hole at Le Sirenuse overlooking the Mediterranean. “We’ve been coming to St. Moritz for many years, but the town seems to be experiencing this beautiful resurgence, so this felt like a great place to bring our next pop-up of Franco’s,” Carla Sersale, wearing a blouse from the hotel’s Emporio Sirenuse ready-to-wear collection, told Vogue. 

To round out the experience, head barmen Mattia Polverino was on-hand to mix up a menu of specialty cocktails like the Fennel On Ice, concocted specially for the occasion, and the Martini di Positano, composed simply enough with shaken gin and olive oil. They were served in the crystal stemware, and unmistakable blue-striped, hand-blown Nason Moretti tumblers found at Franco’s, which were carefully transported by hand from the Amalfi coast to the Swiss alps. “It wasn’t an easy process, but it’s the little details like this that really make a temporary collaboration truly special,” quipped Aldo Sersale, who now leads the food and beverage program at Le Sirenuse after returning home to Positano with his brother Francesco at the start of the pandemic to work alongside his parents. “We needed to bring our own flavor to this already beautiful space.” 

The flavor also came in the form of a rollicking Italian disco playlist, which kept guests like Matilde Ferri and Ted Gushue, Melanie Brandman, local restauranteur, and tailor Silvano Vitalini, and curator Giorgio Pace sipping and grooving until the time came to move along to the next port of call, The Dracula Club. The members-only dinner club and late-night disco, founded by Gunter Sachs in 1974 and known just as much for its garlic-shaped disco ball as it is for its iron-clad membership policy, is where Antonio Sersale began to ruminate on his next Franco’s frontier. “I think we need to have a little bar in here,” he said, admiring the dance floor. “The energy feels just right.”