Oro satisfies and comforts

Eating at Oro is like settling into a comfortable table at a home where everyone's a really good cook and the meal is full of your comfort-food favorites.  Except the home is on a corner in busy downtown Raleigh, the room is elegant, and truffles were probably not a staple of the mac-and-cheese you grew up with.  On a cool fall night, Oro was a perfect place to be, and I suspect it will grow only more desirable as the days shorten and turn colder.

Our large group sampled quite a few of the dishes on offer, including the truffle mac & cheese, the grilled Caesar salad, the roasted corn risotto, the gnocchi with pesto cream sauce and pear slices, the New York strip, the braised beef short ribs, the pork belly tacos, and the grilled octopus.  (Hey, I said we ate quite a few!)

For most of us, there wasn't a bad bite in the meal.  A couple found the pork belly and pineapple salsa a bit too much, and a couple didn't try the octopus, but they were the outliers; most of us tried and liked everything.

Their truffle mac & cheese has headed the menu for a long time, and with cause:  it's a perfect rendering of a classic dish, and it has truffles.  What's not to like?  The pesto cream sauce was an unusual touch, and the gnocchi were on the heavy side, but I loved the dish.

The desserts were good but not, to my taste, up to the savories.  I don't think any will steer you wrong.  The headliner is their campfires, in which you roast your own marshmallows at your table.

Executive chef and owner Chris Hylton is not breaking new ground with his dishes--I would love to see him go wild with an outre tasting menu, just to experience his vision unrestrained by commercial requirements--but he and the team in the kitchen are doing all of the items on the menu with skill.  The result is high-end comfort food that lets you enjoy a wonderfully tasty and comforting meal.

I have now eaten at Oro on multiple occasions, and I have enjoyed every single meal.  I recommend it highly.