Oro Restaurant and Lounge, a new tapas place in downtown Raleigh's RBC Plaza building, will open Sunday night.

I got to walk through Oro yesterday afternoon with co-owner Cara Zalcberg Hylton. I have to say it is beautiful inside: sleek white leather chairs, a 17-foot wooden wine carousel in one corner and two huge light fixtures dangling from the ceiling that dominate the space. The lights are these bronze cylinders decorated with circles. (I can't do them justice so go to the restaurant's website and there are photos on the front page.)

The decor will make you feel like you are enjoying a sophisticated adult evening but with more reasonable prices. The tapas cost between $7 to at most $15. (To see the menu, go HERE.)

The restaurant is for evenings when "you want to feel like you are in a big city but with Raleigh prices," says Cara Zalcberg Hylton. 

They offer six local beers on tap and 16 wines on tap. The wines on tap allows you to "taste wine that you wouldn't otherwise buy by the bottle," she says.

Hylton's husband, Chris, is the chef and worked most recently at The Mint restaurant, which has since closed in downtown Raleigh. (Go HERE to read an earlier post about his background.) He's joined in the kitchen by Lauren Smaxwell, who most recently worked at The Pit with barbecue legend Ed Mitchell.

The Raleigh City Council today approved a rent restructuring for The Mint restaurant located in the city-owned building One Exchange Plaza on Fayetteville Street.

The revised agreement between the city and Raleigh Restaurant Group reduces the rent by $1,159.63 per month for three years and then recoups much of that money with higher rents in the later years of the lease.

The restructuring reduces the overall value of the 10-year lease by $339.

The Mint opened in January 2008, shortly before the economy tanked and consumers severely cut back on eating out.

Now usually, we're not in the business of reporting rumors, but this one comes from a highly reliable source: there were tables spotted outside the fabled Mecca restaurant in downtown Raleigh Friday afternoon. We checked with other long-time devotees of the Mecca and they had not heard of this before, either.

The Mecca is a gathering place for the Raleigh courthouse crowd, and the state Supreme Court (which we thought deserved a separate mention, being supreme and all). Former Gov. Jim Hunt usually comes by once a week when he's in town, sometimes in the company of former Chief Justice Burley Mitchell.  And politicians have long met at the Mecca to do a little deal-making. They like the upstairs, which provides privacy, not that these are secret deals or anything, of course. Perhaps now, they'll take advantage of the opportunity to sit outside, what with the need for open government and all.

The restaurant is also a favorite of The N&O, by the way. (I'm a chicken salad plate man myself, though the lasagna and cheesburger are favorites of colleagues.) I'm not sure we'll be able to adjust, either. We like downstairs because we can see everybody coming and going. Still, we must stand up for open reporting and opinionizing.

For a spring evening downtown, dining al fresco doesn't seem like a bad idea. One thing: we realize it may be al fredo, and we may have it spelled wrong, which usually happens when we try to bring out a highfalutin' vocabulary.