Hungry? Moe’s hopes so, for the sake of BBQ and bowling.

It’s happened only once before, so when raspy-voiced singer, beer enthusiast and Carolina barbecue expert Marty Jones raves about a new joint, you pay attention.

“A mind-blowing pulled-pork sandwich (I’ve been enjoying them Alabama-style, with white sauce and easy on the red) and primo, knockout ribs, too. The sides are dynamite, as well, made from scratch, delish. And Dale’s Pale Ale cans behind the bar. Add in the bowling lanes and live music and you have a genuine piece of heaven on Earth,” he says. (Full disclosure: Jones, whose new band is Marty Jones and the Great Unknowns, does marketing for Dale’s Pale, but he doesn’t spin on pork.)

The last time Jones sent me on a barbecue journey, it led to Breckenridge Brewery, 471 Kalamath St., and chef Stuart Close’s eastern Carolina-style pulled-pork sandwich. The Moe’s Original Bar B Que odyssey started in Birmingham, Ala., when three college friends bonded over smoked meat, the blues, whisky… and snow.

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The new façade at Katie Mullen’s barely hints at the massive changes inside.

Will the world ever tire of the Irish pub? Doubt it. There may be a bit of tokenism in it, but the Irish way of drinking in a warm and welcoming, wooden-walled pub hangs on as a grand tradition in many countries.

These days, a few bar owners are stepping it up, moving the well-worn Irish pub concept in interesting directions. Katie Mullen’s Irish Pub and Restaurant (1550 Court Place) is one of these, though it’s still rooted firmly in the familiar traditions.

Anchoring one corner of the new downtown Sheraton Hotel, formerly the Adam’s Mark Hotel, Katie Mullen’s is a more upscale version of the neighborhood pub. The post-work crowd is more suits and Blackberries than jeans and beat-up Motorolas.

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“Look,” said my wife, Annie, pointing across the room. “Oh, my God.” Waiter with 4-foot tall pepper mill. Flashback. 1981.

An unusually sensitive diner, one particular about contemporary approaches to restaurant design and menu development, the kind of customer who shrinks from things that snarky bloggers might ridicule, would feel uncomfortable in Carelli’s, an Italian restaurant in Boulder.

There’s the pepper mill, of course. But the industrial tablecloths and wine glasses, the kind of chairs you get in banquet halls or country-club luncheonettes with names like “The 19th Hole,” also would unsettle the sensitive diner. The garlic bread — slabs of cotton-soft “Italian” bread saturated with oil, robed in garlic and oregano — would remind the sensitive diner of meals he ate with his parents in 1981 at that Italian place near the motel. This would startle the sensitive diner.

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