IT WAS COLD AND RAINING, and I was running close to an hour late to meet family for dinner. My cellphone was dead. I had chosen to take Piedmont to Buckhead from downtown, rather than Peachtree, which was a big mistake. I sat, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel, as traffic inched along. I debated looking for a phone booth, but that would just get me soaked (and ruin my shoes) while adding another 20 minutes to my lateness.

I was beginning to lose my sense of humor. When I arrived, the valet took my keys as quickly as he could, but I got drenched anyway.

Jenni Girtman/AJC (ENLARGE)
The 28-ounce porterhouse, second only to the ribeye, boasts the perfect combination of muscle and fat at Bone's.
Jenni Girtman/AJC (ENLARGE)
Bone's bibb salad is served with a raspberry vinaigrette dressing and garnished with pistachios, blue cheese and cinnamon apples.
Jenni Girtman/AJC (ENLARGE)
A signature dessert is apple streusel bread pudding served with cinnamon ice cream and caramel sauce.
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Sodden and defeated, I walked to the bar and searched desperately for a familiar face.

"You look like you could use a glass of champagne," came the booming voice of the bartender, and he offered one up without hesitation.

Taking a sip, I scanned and found my family.

They were also at the bar, making friends with the assorted crowd that hangs out at Bone's.

In that instant, an hour's worth of stress melted away, and I realized why Bone's has become the institution it has in Atlanta. It's not big, fat, well-cut steaks, though they are the obvious draw. It's not the drinks, which are always poured in a generous fashion. It's not the never-ending, well-chosen wine list. It's not even the grit fritters and hash browns, which are menu must-haves.

It's the staff. Seasoned, venerable waiters and bartenders who treat every customer as if he or she is a nightly regular.

The bartenders get to know you if you want them to. If you don't, they politely leave you alone.

The waiters treat you as if you are Donald Trump. It's not as if they aren't used to very important persons — Bone's is a celebrity haunt where CNN anchors hobnob next to tables of New York stockbrokers, and local wheelers-and-dealers dine for the VIP treatment and the privacy.

Bone's' old-fashioned, personalized service is a dying breed: the doorman remembering your name; the waiter remembering that you like mint, not lemon, in your tea; the host understanding that you don't like to sit with your back to the room. (The restaurant recently came under scrutiny from the Georgia Department of Revenue for giving personal lockers to customers for storing their wine. The wine bottles — some valued at $1,000 to $2,000 — were seized but returned Jan. 27, according to Isabel Kane, who handles customer relations and reservations for the restaurant.)

Bone's opened in 1979 when very little was happening in Buckhead as far as upscale restaurants go. It's no guess that other than additions like the downstairs dining room (which used to be a Fred Astaire Dance Studio) and the recently added "dog room," replete with doggie décor galore, very little has been tacked on to the decor since.

The main dining area remains my favorite, where the walls are heavily studded with framed photographs of God knows who and the glass partition down the center of the room gives a sense of seclusion but lets you snoop at other tables, too. The bar deserves homage as well, with its caricatures of barely recognizable Atlanta celebrities, from Billy Carter to Lun Lun and Yang Yang.

It's like a backroom boys club that just loves to let girls in.

Even the steaks have a masculine aura. (It's hard to think of a 28-ounce porterhouse as feminine.) Every time one arrives at the table, I want to shout, "Hello, gorgeous."

The bone-in ribeye is Bone's' best cut: 22 ounces of pure, unadulterated meat, with gobs of butter and seasonings smeared all over its beautifully charred exterior. This is what God wanted steak to taste like.

The porterhouse, especially the larger cuts (and especially when it's charred Pittsburgh style and left red in the center) is a very close second. If Cary Grant had been a steak, he would have been this one. It is sleek and perfectly marbled, the perfect combination of muscle and fat.

The kitchen, run since 1981 by Gregory Gammage, dishes out more muscular servings of shrimp cocktail, lump crab meat and lobsters with horseradish-heavy cocktail sauce and a funky remoulade that tastes better on the bread, which is hot and doughy.

Most of the offerings — well . . . all of the offerings are a bit old hat but impressively executed: wedge salads rife with super-rich blue cheese and bacon bits; bibb salad with pistachios and cinnamon apples (a signature); hash browns fried into a perfect circle the size of the plate with sour cream and onions; and mounds of mashed potatoes with which to find no fault

at all.

The only fault to find is when Bone's veers into a realm reserved for more creative kitchens. Carpaccio made of tenderloin is so weird I'm not sure I want to eat it, especially when it's smeared with a heavy cream sauce that is totally out of place. A crab-and-lobster Napoleon is simply over-the-top in a bad way — too creamy, too manipulated, too much. And a hash at lunch is as dry and tasteless as cardboard.

Almost all the desserts are made at Bone's, and my favorite way to finish a meal there is with a huge slice of cheesecake, draped with warm berries or whatever other fruity thing that might have been hanging around the kitchen that day. Unimaginative? Of course. But who's going to argue?

It is exactly the kind of realism we've come to expect from this steakhouse. We expect it. And we get it — every time.

BONE'S
3130 Piedmont Road N.E., Atlanta

Overall rating:
Food: Classic steakhouse dining, with signature salads and vegetables served family style (i.e., large portions), stiff drinks and wine list to match the size of the gorgeous steaks.
Service: The staff slips a little more at lunch than in the past, but Bone's is still one of those rare places with the kind of personalized service you expect only at the Ritz.
Setting: Smoky bar, with dining rooms upstairs and down draped with leather, hardwoods and brick, including the "dog room" with doggie décor galore.
Address, telephone: 3130 Piedmont Road N.E. Atlanta, (404) 237-2663
Hours: Open for lunch Monday through Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.; for dinner Sunday through Thursday from 5:30 to 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday for dinner from 5:30 to 11 p.m.
Price range: The French onion soup starts at $5.95 and prices go up (way, way up) from there. Appetizers range from $11.95 to $14.95. Steaks (and chops) run from $28.95 to $32.95 a pound for the porterhouse. Seafood dishes are $14.95 to $28.95; the lobster is $19.95 per pound.
Credit cards: Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Diners Club, Carte Blanche, Discover
Best Dishes: Ribeye and porterhouse steaks, mashed potatoes, hash browns, shrimp and lump crab meat cocktails, wedge salad with blue cheese
Full bar or wine/beer: Full bar with a deep and impressively selected wine list.
Reservations: Accepted
Vegetarian selections: What? It's a steakhouse. But there are plenty of large-portioned vegetables and salads to go around.
Children: While welcome, little ones might feel more comfortable in more relaxed (and certainly less smoky) surroundings.
Parking: Complimentary valet
Wheelchair access: Yes
Smoking: Bar only
Noise level: Medium
Patio: No
Takeout: No

KEY TO RATINGS
Outstanding. Sets the standard for fine dining in the region.
Excellent. One of the best in the Atlanta area.
Very good. Merits a drive if you're looking for this kind of dining.
Good. A worthy addition to its neighborhood, but food may be hit or miss.
Restaurants that do not meet these criteria may be rated Fair or Poor.