Solvino: The Wine Restaurant Windermere Accidentally Got Right
Denied a permit as a wine bar, Arjun and Sara Kumar built something better — a bottle shop, a public courtyard and a members' dining room that give Windermere its most serious wine program.
3 minute read
Solvino exists because Windermere told it no. Arjun and Sara Kumar, who live in Keene’s Pointe, planned a small boutique wine bar for the new Main Street development — a pour house where neighbors could stop before dinner elsewhere. When the Town Council denied the conditional-use permit a stand-alone bar required, another tenant’s withdrawal freed a larger space, and the Kumars did something better: they built a full restaurant with a commercial kitchen, which needs no such permit to pour. The wine bar Windermere rejected became the wine restaurant it needed.
Three rooms, three ways in
Solvino is really three businesses sharing one address in the Main Street development at 6th Avenue. The bottle shop is open to the public and stocked the way the Kumars talk about wine — every bottle earning its place on quality rather than marketing, from everyday favorites to rare cellar finds, with guided in-store tastings that bring producers and winemakers through Windermere on a regular rotation. The courtyard is public too, and deliberately relaxed: signature smash burgers, hand-cut fries, crafted spritzes, wines by the glass and house-made ice cream from the pastry chef, in a European-style outdoor room built for golden hour.
The restaurant and lounge, by contrast, are reserved for members and their guests — a deliberately limited membership that keeps the dining room intimate and the kitchen focused on scratch cooking designed around the wine list. Pairing dinners, kitchen takeovers and prospective-member evenings are how the curious get a seat; the shop’s event calendar is the door to watch.
A wine program with a point of view
Solvino’s shelves are stocked against the grain of the modern wine shop. The Kumars say plainly that their bottles are not chosen by marketing departments, national sales quotas or the latest trend — every wine earns its place on quality, from producers who care more about what is in the bottle than what is on the label. The collection leans into fine wines, rare finds and small producers, and the guided tastings give it a curriculum: Old World against New World sauvignon blanc one week, a benchmark Tuscan estate the next, with winemakers occasionally pouring their own wines in the room. For a town of two square miles, it is an improbably serious wine program — and that improbability is the appeal.
The members’ kitchen follows the same logic. Dishes are designed to complement the wine rather than compete with it, ingredients are selected with intention, and the lounge’s quiet, modern room sits about as far from the theme-park corridor’s dining scene as a fifteen-minute drive can take you. Reviewers who have found their way in single out the rare-bottle selection and the calm of the room.
Local to the last detail
The Kumars’ localism is specific, not decorative. Solvino partners with Maison Des Rêves, a Windermere-based chocolatier, giving the chocolate maker its first storefront presence, and has explored rotating a local sourdough baker through the program. The couple’s own story is woven into the town — they married at a historic vineyard outside Verona credited with the creation of Amarone, chose Windermere when, as Arjun tells it, they hit the roundabout at 6th and knew they were home, and built Solvino as the place they wanted to raise their family around.
Practically: the bottle shop keeps daytime-to-evening hours most days and is the easiest way in; courtyard service is the casual play; and the guided tastings — recent evenings have ranged from Tuscan estates to benchmark Napa cabernet — reward booking ahead. Solvino completes the Main Street trio with Fresco Pizzeria and Windermere Brewing Company. Find all three on our Orlando Top Spots Map and in the Windermere hub.
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