Antonio’s Market & Wine Shop

Antonio’s has been a fixture on South Orlando Avenue in Maitland for decades, built around a two level concept that pairs an upstairs Italian restaurant with a downstairs market and wine shop, and it is the downstairs half, the market, cafe, and wine shop, that lands squarely in the specialty retail category rather than the dining side of the business. The market operates as an Italian specialty grocery and bottle shop, the kind of place locals rely on for imported pasta, cheese, cured meats, olive oil, and other Italian pantry staples that are harder to find at a standard supermarket, alongside a wine selection that draws specifically on Italian regions and varietals.

That kind of specialty market fills a real gap for home cooks in the area. Rather than substituting with whatever a chain grocery store happens to stock, shoppers can come to Antonio’s for the specific imported ingredients an authentic Italian recipe calls for, and pick up a bottle of wine chosen to go with the meal at the same stop. The wine selection in particular benefits from staff who understand food pairing in a specifically Italian context, which is a different kind of expertise than what a general liquor store typically offers.

The market and cafe side keeps extended hours, open seven days a week from late morning until 9 in the evening, with Sunday hours starting slightly later at 11:30. That schedule makes it easy to stop in for ingredients or a bottle of wine well into the evening, whether that means picking up dinner components after work or grabbing a bottle on the way to a dinner party. The restaurant upstairs operates on its own separate phone line and schedule, so shoppers focused specifically on the market and wine shop should use the downstairs market number directly.

Located on South Orlando Avenue within the same general corridor as several of Maitland’s antique shops, Antonio’s makes a natural stop for anyone spending an afternoon exploring the area’s small independent retailers, offering a very different kind of specialty shopping, food and wine rather than antiques or clothing, but with the same emphasis on knowledgeable, personal service that defines most of Maitland’s independent businesses. For anyone building a menu around Italian cooking or simply looking for a well chosen bottle of Italian wine without driving into Orlando proper, the market at Antonio’s remains one of the more reliable specialty stops in the northern suburbs.