Familiar and familial, Bisetti’s is a Northern Colorado gem. Photo by Kristen Browing-Blas.

After 30 years in business, Bisetti’s does not serve surprises. The Fort Collins restaurant has played it slow and steady, serving house-made minestrone, pasta and red sauce, with a candle in a Chianti bottle on every table.

This is familiar, familial food. When Bob and Anita Bisetti opened their restaurant in 1979, the place sat 50 people. Anita cooked her family’s southern-Italian recipes — eggplant parm, lasagna, spaghetti.

Their son Robert and his wife, Heather, bought the restaurant in 1988 and expanded it to seat 175. The space is divided by sliding wood and glass doors into small rooms decorated with rustic chandeliers, faux plaster finishes and murals of Italian country scenes.

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Stand-up comedian Dom Irrera has been making people laugh almost as long as some of his fans have been alive, but the sitcom and late-night talk show veteran isn’t anywhere near packing it up. Irrera, who got his break via Rodney Dangerfield’s “Nothing Goes Right” specials on HBO, has lately been providing voicework for Nickelodeon’s “Back to the Barnyard,” and, of course, hitting the road.

In advance of Irrera’s sets at Comedy Works on Friday and Saturday, we thought we’d send Irrera five questions about such random topics as being occasionally recognized, the differences between stage and screen and his favorite new comedian (hint: he’s biased as hell).

Here are his answers, transcribed by his friendly publicist…

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Is Lavish really what our little old city needs right now? the club’s owners say “yes.”

In the current, wheezing economy, the days of posh exclusivity seem almost pitifully passé. Thrifty chic is in: Movie stars happily share their penny-saving tips and private jets have become embarrassing signifiers of waste. Who could have predicted this in 2005, the heyday of Paris Hilton and the Hummer?

The new cultural climate makes for interesting moves on the night life scene. Take, for example, Lavish (1448 Market St.), the new lounge that opened Jan. 30. “Lavish” doesn’t seem like a good word to use these days, but the club’s owners have a different take. “Lavish” and “affordable” aren’t mutually exclusive in their world.

“We’re trying to offer a world-class experience and service at a reasonable price,” says marketing director Tara Hallam. “We want everyone to be able to come into the space and live lavishly.”

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Like it or not, we’ve transformed ourselves over the past decade — from a nation of coffee breakers, where coffee drinkers would take 15 minutes out from their morning routines to sip a soothing mug of joe, and into a nation where we’ve got to have a coffee (or a cappucino, or a double-decaf-skinny-latte) within constant reach through the hours between reveille and lunch.

And so, to stay pacified, we drink (coffee) and drive. We maintain a healthy stable of eco-friendly insulated cups but still find our cars littered with coffee cups. And more and more coffee shops and fast-food behemoths are offering drive-thru coffee.

Too bad most of these in-car brews are, to put it mildly, just awful.

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