The Sunday Summons — March 8, 2026

On quiet beginnings, a wine shop near Disneyland, and the held breath before spring

Can you feel it?

Not quite spring. Not quite winter anymore either. Something in between — that particular quality of light that arrives before the season does, the air carrying just enough warmth to make you believe in what’s coming. Here in the desert, the change is subtle. The mornings are softer. Archie lingers outside a little longer than he did in January, nose up, reading something in the air I can’t quite translate.

I’ve always loved this moment more than spring itself. The threshold. The held breath. The sense that something good is gathering just out of sight. Where anticipation lives, where everything still feels possible before it becomes specific. At the table, it looks like the hour before guests arrive — wine open and breathing, kitchen smelling like something worth waiting for, the particular stillness of a room about to fill up.

I’ve been thinking about beginnings this week.

Not the loud kind — the announcements, the launches, the ribbon cuttings. The quiet kind. The ones that don’t announce themselves until you’re already inside them. The wine shop in Anaheim, when I was seven, sitting on a barrel too big for me, holding a glass of Concord grape juice like I was tasting too. I didn’t know then that I was at a beginning. I just knew the room smelled like something worth paying attention to.

That’s how most of the important things start, I think. Not with fanfare but with a smell, a feeling, a kind old man shuffling over to make sure two little girls felt included in something they were too young to understand.

The Dinner Bell is in that kind of beginning right now. Not new exactly. Two years of Sundays have brought us here — but expanded. Deepened. Three pillars taking shape, three introductions landing over the next three weeks. Each one a door I’ve been meaning to open for a long time.

This week, The Vine opens — and it begins, as the best things do, not with what I know but with what I remember. It’s waiting for you on Wednesday.

Think about a beginning you almost missed. A moment you were inside before you knew it was important. What did it smell like? Who was there? What were you holding? Some of our most important thresholds only make sense looking back. That’s enough. They still count.

Whatever you’re standing on the edge of this week, step through. The best things are usually on the other side.

Join the ledger. Listen for the bell. I’ll see you at the table.

— Jen