It wasn't love at first for Anna Sonenshein when she met Niki Vahle while working on Son of a Gun in 2018. Rather, it started with a dispute.
Sonenshein worked as host and Vahle as sous chef. She practically ignored him.
“I was tired of cooking thinking it was better than serving the public,” she told me by phone from the house they now share. “It's a very common thing in restaurants and I hate it.”
But, like all good star-crossed stories, the couple fell in love.
“And I took all that out of Niki,” Sonenshein said.
“He did it,” he shouted from a distance, while wrestling with one of his two dogs, Chicken. “We no longer tolerate any of that in our restaurant.”
The restaurant in question is Little Fish, included in the Michelin Guidewhich the couple started as a pop-up in their kitchen window in 2020 and expanded to two locations: Echo Park and Melrose Hill.
In Little Fish, Sonenshein and Vahle effortlessly combine business, pleasure, family, friendship and food.
The couple's friend, Hannah Ziskin of Quarter Sheets, made several cakes, including a “chef-y” combination of rhubarb with pistachio chiffon and orange peel mascarpone custard, and their classic olive oil chiffon with fresh passion fruit and bay leaf-infused custard. The dog figure, on the right, is modeled after the couple's pets, Chicken and Hank.
(Madelyn Deutch)
It makes sense, then, that their biggest partnership to date, an April 18 wedding, would be a food-first, ceremony-second affair. About 120 guests sampled sardines on the modest backyard of Sonenshein's childhood home in Santa Monica, with a veritable who's who of the Los Angeles restaurant scene doing double duty as attendees and vendors.
As the teams behind Mariscos Jaliscos and El Ruso Installed trucks in front, Aaron Lindell and Hannah Ziskin of quarter sheets skipped conversation, and Kae Whalenthe beloved Los Angeles Wine Substacker (who also runs Little Fish's wine program), made her way through the crowd with her tiny Pomeranian under her arm.
In this dark era for Los Angeles restaurants, where economic fears, fires and ICE have led to countless closures, Sonenshein and Vahle have strived to build community among restaurant workers and collaborators.
Niki Vahle and Anna Sonenshein, owners of Little Fish, embrace during their backyard wedding.
(Madelyn Deutch)
“When we started our business, neither of us had any knowledge of the back end,” Ziskin told me. “We figured it out together.”
She and Lindell converted their Quarter Sheets pop-up into a brick-and-mortar store in 2022. Little Fish followed the same trajectory a few months later.
“Niki and Anna will answer any questions you have,” Ziskin said. “We talk about business, about money. It's very rare to have that: friends in the same position who deeply understand what you do.”
Vahle and Sonenshein refer to their friends who also started food businesses during the pandemic as “our class.”
“We are peers, not competition,” Vahle said. “We share notes; we share everything.”
In January 2025, when the Palisades and Eaton fires devastated the city, these friends were the ones Sonenshein and Vahle called first to create a network of almost 200 restaurants to obtain, cook and deliver meals to displaced families and first responders.
Wedding guests enjoy the table and cake. (Madelyn Deutch)
Catalina Flores of Panhead LA curated the bountiful grazing table.
(Madelyn Deutch)
While the party waited for Sonenshein and Vahle to appear, guests savored their Whalen wine selections: a 2023 Domaine Derain “Landre” for Vahle (“A Niki wine reminds us that beauty, precision, and transcendence are possible”) and a 2024 Le Mazel “Couvée Paulou” for Sonenshein (“An Anna wine is often fruity, vibrant, easy to love, and adored easily”).
Meanwhile, like any good father of the bride, Raphe Sonenshein held court at the grazing table, encouraging anyone within earshot to fill plates with cured charcuterie, taralli, and gildas. Catalina Flores (Panhead LA) and Ryan Vesper (Gourmet Imports).
The bride's mother, Phyllis Amaral, led family members to a handful of folding chairs in the front row. Everyone else spent the night standing, balancing plates and, inevitably, spilling some wine.
“Very creative wedding,” said a family friend.
The low-key backyard wedding took place at the bride's childhood home. Her sister, Julia Sonenshein, left, and her mother, Phyllis Amaral, wore red.
(Madelyn Deutch)
The couple made their entrance, arm in arm, with Sonenshein in a tea-length corseted dress and Vahle in a custom-made suit the shade of a Ligurian olive.
During their vows, Sonenshein joked that marriage isn't so scary when you already share six LLCs.
Then, they sealed their new contract with a kiss.
The applause had barely subsided when a collective hunger took over.
Mariscos Jalisco served shrimp tacos, a nod to the couple's restaurant, Little Fish.
(Madelyn Deutch)
Mariscos Jalisco sent out trays of shrimp tacos, a nod to the couple's seafood origin story, but guests still headed straight to the truck, forming a line down the block.
Next door to El Ruso, owner Walter Soto picked at roast beef while his wife, Julia, took orders: two red chiles; three beers; No onions please. Their preteen daughter, Suri, was playing in the front seat of the truck.
“For us it was something very special to know that we were going to serve food on such a special day to someone so special to us,” Soto said. “I remember seeing Niki several times eating at our food truck during the difficult times of the ICE raids. [Then] We had to close our truck for three or four months. Anna and Niki came to my house with a check to help us get through that bad time. “That's how we met them.”
Tacos from El Ruso completed the menu. Owner Walter Soto said it was an honor to serve food at the wedding after the bride and groom supported his business during ICE raids that affected sales.
(Madelyn Deutch)
As for the cake, try two. Both from Ziskin.
“I would have been offended if they hadn’t asked me,” he said.
The first was a classic from the Quarter Sheets menu: olive oil chiffon with fresh passion fruit and bay leaf-infused custard. Ziskin also created what she calls a “chef-y” combination: rhubarb with pistachio chiffon and mascarpone custard with orange peel.
Bride Anna Sonenshein mingles with guests near the El Ruso taco truck.
(Madelyn Deutch)
Before moving the after party to Santa Monica There is no bar (co-owner Conner Mitchell is also one of Little Fish's fishermen), the music cuts briefly for speeches.
Julia Sonenshein, the bride's sister and sometimes food writer, admitted that she couldn't separate their love story from their shared love of cooking.
“For these two, the idea of anyone going without food, whether friends who stopped by for coffee or families who lost their stoves in wildfires, is an unconscionable possibility that they will not accept,” he said. “And then they find a way to make sure we're all fed.”
And what about Sonenshein and Vahle? Did anyone remind you to eat?
Vahle did not hesitate. “How could we forget?”
