How a brother and sister made Santa Ana’s Sonder feel like home

Lamson Nguyen sent his sister a photo of a green banker’s lamp. Diane Nguyen took it from there.

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The resulting space, inside Sonder, a hi-fi listening bar and restaurant in downtown Santa Ana, has floral wallpaper, olive-green seating, rust-hued banquettes and tiered chandeliers. It also features furniture that appeared in Joan’s apartment on “Mad Men,” a mirror rescued from an Anaheim roadside and dishes collected during Diane’s routine trips to thrift stores and estate sales.

A lot to put together, but she makes it look easy.

Now in its second year, the restaurant, owned by the Anaheim-raised siblings, combines Southeast Asian-inspired cooking and cocktails with music and the pleasure of visiting someone who knows how to have people over for a grand time. Lamson keeps the operation moving while Diane creates the surroundings. Even their mother’s cooking has found its way on the menu.

“I want people to come here and feel like this is our house,” said Diane.

She has pulled off something particularly lovely and rare: a maximalist interior that feels seamless, elegant and, above all, accessible. Found objects sit comfortably beside newer furnishings, tied together by shades of green and burgundy, wood, black and brass. Even the restrooms get their due, with dragons and flowers sprawling across bright red wallpaper.

“We wanted it to be a surprise when people walked in there, with a new color scheme” that differs from the main dining room, Diane said.

And despite the “Mad Men” connection, the place never feels like a set design or a kitschy pastiche of midcentury style. The furniture has been given another home where people can order pork belly or roasted beets and listen to Sade. Over here, a friend supplied the pieces from the set of a television series. Over there, other friends donated some furnishings. Diane found a flowerpot on Facebook Marketplace. Her shopping trips help replenish the restaurant’s dishes, although she has learned that heading out specifically for a set of bowls is an excellent way to come home with a lamp.

Her background, when she’s not working at her restaurant, includes designing movie posters and design managing in the entertainment industry. Lamson brings experience in project management, permits and running neighboring Kaizen Shabu, which he owns. He understands how to get a restaurant built, while she knows what she wants it to look like. But both have a hand in the overall design, which, in turn, has created its design-savvy yet welcoming vibe.

Their responsibilities are otherwise clearly divided. Diane oversees the creative work and helps keep the business organized. Lamson handles operations, numbers and service. She brings people in and “he’s the one that keeps them here,” she said. Small wonder, as the name they chose, Sonder, stems from the a concept coined by writer John Koenig — namely, that although we’re all the main character in our own lives, the realization that every person around you, even strangers passing by, “has a life as vivid, complex and layered as your own.”

Getting through the first year, an accomplishment in and of itself for any restaurant amid rising costs, has given the brother and sister new reasons to appreciate each other. Lamson admires how quickly Diane adapted to restaurant work and earned the staff’s respect. Diane has learned from her brother’s calmer disposition. Watching him greet people and provide good service day after day has impressed her.

“We have very different brains, but we understand the other side too,” she said.

The menu requires some flexibility as well. The original plan leaned heavily on skewers. As the siblings settled into the idea of a dinner party, they gave executive chef Nate Overstreet more freedom to develop shared-style plates. (He also works alongside Ashly Amador in the kitchen.) .

“We kind of pull from everywhere,” said Overstreet of a menu grounded in Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian influences.

And sometimes a dish’s inspiration arrives as lunch from mom.

One day, the siblings’ mother brought them bánh đúc, a rustic dish that they shared with Overstreet. He became smitten with the savory meal and wanted it for the restaurant, eventually turning to the mother’s recipe to get it right.

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The beef-and-pork version at Sonder places a soft mound of tapioca-flour pudding amid meat, maitake mushrooms and water chestnuts with mint, cilantro, fish sauce and fried shallots. Served on a floral plate (the found-dishware here is cheerful and sublime but never cloying), it makes the family-dinner premise literal. Better yet, the bánh đúc here is comforting and, well, very, very good.

The little gem salad arrives in a generous heap beneath a flurry of smoked pecorino. Black vinegar and preserved lemon sharpen its Caesar dressing, while breadcrumbs made from 61 Hundred Bread’s blue corn sourdough bring another Santa Ana business to the table. The seafood cocktail puts shrimp and octopus in a clear cocktail sauce consommé with avocado, Thai chili and yuzu kosho.

Bone marrow onigiri comes with trout roe, chives and tare. A pork belly skewer, glossy with sauce, rests on another floral plate accompanied by mustard, black vinegar, Thai basil and chives. A special shout-out goes to the outside skirt steak, sliced and resting on a bed of coconut-creamed collard greens. (One of my favorite dishes of 2026 so far.)

Now, on to desserts, a course I approach with cautious optimism given how, more often than not, a meal’s sweet finale comes off as an afterthought at eateries. Not here. Most notably, the pandan butterscotch pudding practically glows a verdant, technicolor green. It arrives in a floral teacup on a saucer beneath a generous quenelle of whipped crème fraîche with a light dusting of smoked Maldon salt. The dainty presentation makes that exuberant color all the more striking.

The kitchen and bar share ingredients and ideas, including uses for preserved lemons. Whey from the kitchen’s ricotta becomes a brine for chicken, for example. Bar manager Tony Bounyaseng, raised in Arkansas and a bartender for roughly 15 years, shares credit for the drinks. “We get creative together,” he said.

The cocktail list includes the Sade-inspired Smooth Operator made with Hennessy, rum, passion fruit and vanilla yogurt. Nonalcoholic drinks receive attention too. On my visit, one combined lemongrass, shiso and lime leaf.

Music, which is part of Sonder’s mission for community and connection, changes the pace of the room as the evening progresses. Dinner generally has a jazzier, gentler soundtrack with Saturday dinner service devoted to vinyl. Later, the volume rises as the crowd grows (without drowning out conversation during my visit). Thursday programming brings in different collectives, including the R&B-focused Kiss & Tell. Whitney Houston and Sade are, as they always should be, favorites.

Finding the balance between dinner and late-night gathering remains a work in progress, said Lamson. But regulars now stop in several times a week, sometimes just for a skewer and a drink. At least two neighborhood restaurant owners stopped by for a quick sip while I was dining, greeting familiar staff with hugs and handshakes. Roughly 80% of the day-one opening team remains.

Dishware has even prompted its own conversations. One guest recognized a plate pattern her mother used at her wedding reception. Others see pieces that remind them of a parent or grandparent. While the siblings, only three years apart, set out to make Sonder feel like their home away from home, a few guests have found a little of their own here, too.

Hours: 5 to 10 p.m., Tuesdays through Thursdays (sometimes later on Thursdays for special events), 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays 5 to 10 p.m. Sundays. Closed Mondays.

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Find it: 301 N. Spurgeon St., Santa Ana, 714-486-1070, sonderdtsa.com