It wasn’t love at first anything for Anna Sonenshein when she met Niki Vahle while working at Son of a Gun in 2018. Rather, it started with a feud.
Sonenshein worked as a host, Vahle as a sous chef. She mostly ignored him.
“I was fed up with the kitchen thinking they were better than front-of-house,” she told me, on speakerphone, from the home they now share. “It’s such a common thing in restaurants, and I hate it.”
But, like all good star-crossed stories, the pair fell in love.
“And I beat all that out of Niki,” Sonenshein said.
“She did,” he called from a distance, as he wrangled one of their two dogs, Chicken. “We don’t tolerate any of that now in our restaurant.”
The restaurant in question is the Michelin Guide-inducted Little Fish, which the couple started as a pop-up out of their kitchen window in 2020 and has expanded to two locations: Echo Park and Melrose Hill.
With Little Fish, Sonenshein and Vahle unapologetically mix business, pleasure, family, friendship and food.
Friend of the couple, Hannah Ziskin of Quarter Sheets, made multiple cakes, including a “chef-y” combination of rhubarb with pistachio chiffon and mascarpone custard infused with orange peel, and her classic olive oil chiffon with fresh passionfruit and bay leaf-infused custard. The dog figurine, 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 sardined into the modest backyard of Sonenshein’s Santa Monica childhood home, with a veritable who’s who of the L.A. restaurant scene doing double duty as attendees and vendors.
As the teams behind Mariscos Jaliscos and El Ruso set up trucks out front, Aaron Lindell and Hannah Ziskin of Quarter Sheets conversation-hopped, and Kae Whalen, the L.A. darling wine Substacker (who also runs Little Fish’s wine program), snaked through the crowd with her pint-sized pomeranian under one arm.
In this dark era for L.A. restaurants, where economic fears, fires and ICE have led to countless closures, Sonenshein and Vahle have made a point of building community among restaurant workers and collaborators.
Niki Vahle and Anna Sonenshein, owners of Little Fish, embrace during their backyard wedding.
(Madelyn Deutch)
“When we were starting our businesses, none of us had any knowledge of the back-end stuff,” Ziskin told me. “We figured it out together.”
She and Lindell turned their Quarter Sheets pop-up into a brick-and-mortar in 2022. Little Fish followed the same trajectory a few months later.
“Niki and Anna will answer any question I have,” Ziskin said. “We talk business, money. It’s so 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’re peers, not competition,” Vahle said. “We share notes; we share everything.”
In January 2025, when the Palisades and Eaton fires ripped through the city, these friends were the ones Sonenshein and Vahle called first as they created a network of almost 200 restaurants to source, cook and deliver meals to displaced families and first responders.
Wedding guests enjoy the grazing table and cake. (Madelyn Deutch)
Catalina Flores, of Panhead LA, curated the abundant grazing table.
(Madelyn Deutch)
As the party waited for Sonenshein and Vahle to appear, guests sipped his and hers wine selections by Whalen: a Domaine Derain “Landre” 2023 for Vahle (“A Niki wine reminds us that beauty, precision and transcendence are possible”), and a Le Mazel “Couvée Paulou” 2024 for Sonenshein (“An Anna wine is often fruity, vibrant, easy to adore and adores easily”).
Meanwhile, like any good father of the bride, Raphe Sonenshein held court at the grazing table, encouraging anyone in earshot to pile plates with charcuterie, taralli and gildas curated by Catalina Flores (Panhead LA) and Ryan Vesper (Gourmet Imports).
The mother of the bride, Phyllis Amaral, shepherded family members to a handful of front-row folding chairs. Everyone else would spend the night standing, balancing plates and, inevitably, spilling some wine.
“Very creative wedding,” said one friend of the family.
The low-key backyard wedding took place at the bride’s childhood home. Her sister, Julia Sonenshein, left, and mother, Phyllis Amaral, wore red.
(Madelyn Deutch)
The couple made their entrance — arm in arm — with Sonenshein in a tea-length, corseted gown and Vahle in a bespoke suit the shade of a Liguria olive.
During their vows, Sonenshein joked that marriage isn’t so scary when you already share six LLCs.
Then, they sealed their newest contract with a kiss.
The applause had barely subsided before a collective hunger took over.
Mariscos Jalisco served shrimp tacos, a nod to the couple’s own 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 beelined for the truck, forming a line down the block.
Next door at El Ruso, owner Walter Soto chopped carne asada while his wife, Julia, took orders: two chile colorado; three birria; no onions, please. Their preteen daughter, Suri, played 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 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 endure that really bad time. That’s how we met them.”
El Ruso tacos rounded out the menu. Owner Walter Soto said he was honored to serve food at the wedding after the bride and groom supported his business during the ICE raids that dampened his sales.
(Madelyn Deutch)
As for the cake, try two. Both by Ziskin.
“I would have been offended if they hadn’t asked me,” she said.
The first was a Quarter Sheets menu classic: olive oil chiffon with fresh passionfruit and bay leaf-infused custard. Ziskin also created what she calls a “chef-y” combination: rhubarb with pistachio chiffon and mascarpone custard infused with orange peel.
Bride Anna Sonenshein mingles with guests near the El Ruso taco truck.
(Madelyn Deutch)
Before moving the afterparty to Santa Monica’s Not No Bar (co-owner Conner Mitchell is also one of Little Fish’s fishermen), the music cut briefly for speeches.
Julia Sonenshein, the bride’s sister and a sometimes food writer, admitted that she couldn’t separate their love story from a shared love of cooking.
“For these two, the idea that anyone would go without food, whether it’s friends who’ve stopped by for a coffee table meal or families who lost their kitchens in wildfires, is an unconscionable possibility they won’t accept,” she said. “And so they find a way to make sure all of us are fed.”
And what about Sonenshein and Vahle — did someone remind them to eat?
Vahle didn’t hesitate. “How could we forget?”
