25 June 2026
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Congratulations to Anna Sonenshein and Niki Vahle, chefs of Little Fish Melrose Hill and the 2026 MICHELIN Guide California Young Chefs Award Winners, presented in partnership with Open Table.
Chefs Anna Sonenshein and Niki Vahle are a team, both professionally and personally. The two met while working at Son of a Gun in Los Angeles in 2018, but when the pandemic put them out of work, they never stopped cooking. Instead, they got creative, launching a pop-up out of their home in Echo Park. Their seafood-focused concept, Little Fish, has taken off, earning a loyal following and a MICHELIN Bib Gourmand. Now, they operate Little Fish in Echo Park (reopening soon) and Melrose Hill.
While the fried fish sandwich is a signature at lunch, the tightly edited dinner menu offers impressive seafood plates as well as chicken and wagyu steak. Chef-driven, the menu reflects their focus on quality ingredients.
Recently, we spoke with them about their journey.
What inspired you both to become chefs?
Cooking for other people is how both of our families taught us to strengthen relationships and care for one another. We grew up watching our parents do this for us and for others, and pursuing it professionally felt less like choosing a career and more like doing what comes most naturally to us.What is it like building and running a restaurant as a couple? What does it mean to you personally and how do you decide who does what?
It absolutely rocks. We’re extremely lucky that we work well as a team. We sort of fell into working together, but after the last six years, it’s hard to imagine wanting to do this with anyone else. It rocks, and it’s complicated. We have to untangle a lot of our feelings like ego, frustration and exhaustion, as collaborators and as romantic partners at the same time. Aside from a very well-paid couples therapist, what has helped us most is learning to be really honest with each other in a productive way.Both of us need to be able to run every part of the business and kitchen — it’s always been important to us that no one person is “the financials” and no one person is “the cook.” There are almost no hardlines between what each of us do, just like how all of our cooks know how to work every station. We collaborate on every dish on the menu, regardless of who had the initial idea, though we’ve learned to always give credit for an idea where credit is due.
Ego is a part of our jobs, and it’s totally normal to feel jealous of one another sometimes. Being able to admit it to ourselves and each other, process it, and move on makes a lot more space for us to be truly proud of the other person. We also experience our days completely differently, even when we are in the same space. Every time we get in the car at the end of the day we always ask each other “How was your day?” to bridge that gap, because we truly don’t know each other’s answer.
While we both serve the same function as owner and chef, we find that staff naturally come to us in different ways. We approach our cooking in different ways, and we dream about the future of the restaurant in different ways.
We’re grateful for these differences, but what’s been key is that we always seem to line up with ease when it comes to what we value, how we want to treat people and what we want for our future.
How would you describe Little Fish Melrose Hill in terms of cuisine and vibe, and how does it showcase the Los Angeles area?
We are two California kids cooking, and everything comes from our childhoods in Southern California and our exploration of Northern California in adulthood. Maybe the most special thing about growing up in Los Angeles is just how much variation in cuisine was a part of our every day. We both grew up on a million variations of Mexican food, Persian food, Thai food, deli food and so many more cuisines, and we take for granted how that variety wasn’t exoticized — it was just a part of our upbringings.That integrated sense of so many different ways to enjoy food comes together into our understanding of California hospitality as softness and warmth. You notice it especially in the Bay Area, and we work hard to emulate what we’ve seen up there. There is an ease of the service, which makes people feel taken care of and special without too many bells and whistles.
When we pick products, we look to California first every time. There are instances where there’s something done better elsewhere, and in those cases we’ll opt to reach a bit farther with our sourcing, but it’s few and far between. If there’s a non-local product on our menu, it’s there for a very specific reason.
What are your favorite foods on the menu?
Anna: Right now, it’s our corn dumplings with koji butter and California wakame.Niki: Our bay leaf ice cream with wine-stewed blackberries.
What motivates you both in the kitchen?
We have more fun in this job than we’ve ever had in our lives, and we never want it to end. That’s a pretty big motivator.
How do you both motivate your team?
We listen to them and try out their ideas. Ultimately the buck stops with us, but if you want people to work like they take ownership, then you have to give them some ownership. We both worked at places in our careers, inside and outside of hospitality, where there’s a really creepy company line that goes something like “if the company does better then everyone does better.” But that usually means asking people to go over and above so the people at the top benefit, and there are extra steps that we, as bosses, need to take to make that a reality.If you’re a boss, you can ask yourself to work purely for love and gratification, but you have to give the people around you something tangible. This means money (which there is never enough of, but pay them first, often, and as much as you possibly can), and opportunity. If someone on our team, front- or back-of-house, has an idea they are passionate about and we feel makes sense for the space, we are going to try it. If it works, we give them credit. If it fails, we try something else.
You organized efforts to provide free meals to evacuees and first responders during the Palisades and Eaton fires in 2025. How did you do this and why was it important to you as chefs?
We both grew up in LA, but even if you didn’t and you just own a business here or live here now, it’s impossible not to feel connected to and protective of it. We are products of this city and the people in it, in every way. And restaurants are always in a bit of a precarious spot, always on the verge of what feels like failure. People in restaurants learn empathy quickly and don’t like to see people struggle. The hardest part of our efforts was managing the massive amount of people who wanted to help. In a really dark time for the city, we did get to see the best of it.Who would you invite to eat at Little Fish Melrose Hill that hasn’t dined there yet?
Dolly Parton.
What advice would you give to a young person who wants to become a chef?
Invest in having the right people around you. They should be smarter than you. Pay them as much as you possibly can and let them help you. As for you, it’s never going to guarantee financial stability, so you should make sure you love it. If you do love it, it’s the best job in the world. Related Articles:
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- California's Most Affordable Restaurants in 2026
- How Sons & Daughters Makes a 24-Course Tasting Menu Feel Intimate and Engaging
- How Evan Williams Built California’s Most Acclaimed Cocktail Program
- Inside Lilo’s MICHELIN Award–Winning Wine Program with Wine Director Savannah Riedler
Hero image: The 2026 MICHELIN Guide California Young Chefs Award Winners, Anna Sonenshein and Niki Vahle, chefs of Little Fish Melrose Hill © Kort Havens/Little Fish Melrose Hill
Article created by the MICHELIN Guide in collaboration with Open Table
