Fried Fish Sandwich Superstar Little Fish Opens in Melrose Hill

Fried fish sandwich superstar Little Fish has expanded from its Echo Park window attached to Dada Market into a full-service, sun-drenched space in the rapidly growing Melrose Hill neighborhood. After years of development, partners Anna Sonenshein and Niki Vahle debuted Little Fish Melrose Hill in early December with menus that spotlight West Coast-style seafood.

Sonenshein and Vahle launched Little Fish from their Echo Park home in 2020 after being laid off from Son of a Gun amid the pandemic. The duo popped up around town at venues like Atwater’s Wine + Eggs and McCall’s Meat & Fish Co., building a cult following for their fried fish sandwich. In December 2023, Little Fish opened its first location in Echo Park, serving its famous fried fish sandwich alongside grilled steak sandwiches, cottage cheese pancakes, and fish congee. But, Sonenshein and Vahle still had their sights set on a full-service version of Little Fish and signed a lease in Melrose Hill. “We just started to get really excited about product and serving on real plates and the beauty and special aspect of a real sit-down full-service restaurant,” Sonenshein says.

Stuffed cabbage. Erica Lauren

With Little Fish Melrose Hill, Sonenshein and Vahle set out to open a neighborhood seafood joint that feels accessible but still offers a level of service similar to what can be found in fine dining restaurants. “LA’s so casual,” Sonenshein says. “This is still a casual spot in a lot of ways — you can wear jeans and come in for lunch and whatever — but I think we’re treating service really like a craft. We have felt how special it feels as the diner. And I think we started to see this as an opportunity for ourselves.”

The duo always knew they wanted to serve lunch and dinner at their new place. “Some of it is about, for me, the concept of seafood can feel really inaccessible, and I think it can feel really stuffy and only a special occasion,” Sonenshein says. By offering lunch, she hopes that the restaurant can feel like a place people can return to regularly, instead of only seeking it out on special occasions. During the day, light streams into Little Fish’s dining room designed by Office of BC, illuminating burnt orange floors and white marble tables, while in the evenings, orb lanterns glow overhead and candles flicker on each table.

For lunch, Little Fish Melrose Hill serves a laid-back menu that would feel right at home on the Malibu coast: Slices of Bub & Grandma’s sourdough get paired with creamy Le Meunier butter while red carrots lay in a bed of whipped tofu. The “beach sandwich” layers creamy soy-cured mussels steamed over sake with salty kettle chips as a nod to Sonenshein’s memories of bringing potato chip–filled sandwiches to the beach while growing up in Venice, California. “[The mussels] are so delicious and very much a good entry point for people who are yucked by mussels,” Sonenshein says. “I feel like we’ve really overcome a lot of people’s texture issues there, changed a lot of minds.”

While Little Fish Echo Park serves an albacore tuna sandwich, Melrose Hill goes the tuna melt route using a thick smear of tuna salad dotted with pepperoncini on Bub & Grandma’s rye. A two-year aged cheddar from Shelburne in Vermont blankets the tuna salad, binding the sandwich together. While Sonenshein initially hoped to have an “orange cheese” on the tuna melt, the Shelburne was undeniable. “A tuna melt is supposed to have orange cheese,” she says. “I can’t get it out of my head, but I made the concession because it’s a beautiful cheese.” Lunch also presents a rotating fish of the day that gets dry-aged on site (currently a crispy steelhead trout), crudo, french fries, and, of course, the fried fish sandwich. “What we want to do here is cook seafood seasonally, cook what was able to be caught responsibly, and figure out how to be creative around what is available and what should be used,” Sonenshein says. Little Fish works with Dudley Market owner and fisherman Conner Mitchell to source its seafood.

Beach sandwich. Rebecca Roland

A handful of dishes like the beach sandwich, tuna stuffed olives, and carrots stick around for the dinner menu, joining evening-only items like a roasted chicken nestled in ham jus, cabbage stuffed with abalone rice, and pork and shellfish cotechino. The daily fish makes another appearance, this time as poached steelhead with Meyer lemon relish and trout roe.

Wine, curated by Kae Whalen, is available throughout the day, with $16 glasses of skin-contact, white, and red. Bottles selections comprise a French sauvignon blanc from Burgundy, Danish pinot gris, a pinot noir from Santa Cruz, and more. Daily rotating bottles are available for $64, while the rest of the bottles start in the $55 range.

Little Fish didn’t end up in Melrose Hill by chance: Sonenshein and Vahle were approached by landlord Zach Lasry, who offered a rate they could afford and told them he was trying to build a community of independent owner-operators, instead of leasing to chains. “I don’t think we would’ve ever in a million years been able to do this if it weren’t for a landlord like that,” Sonenshein says. In the last four-or-so years, Melrose Hill has become the home of numerous independent restaurants, including Brian Baik’s Bar 109 and Corridor 109, Italian restaurant Etra, and Chainsaw. “It’s just cool to see owner-operators have the ability to do a thing that the barrier to entry is so unbelievably high,” Sonenshein says. “It feels like a special thing to be a part of.”

Even in its first weeks open, Little Fish is starting to see familiar faces walk through its doors to return for lunch or dinner; Sonenshein says she is already looking forward to having regulars. “We want to build a place that people want to be in and feel comfortable in and trust us to put a good meal out for them,” she says. “Once we get to this point where it feels like we could be a staple in some people’s lives, I think that concept will feel like a huge win for us.”

Little Fish Melrose Hill is located at 5035 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90038. Reservations for lunch and dinner are available on Resy.