A READER E-MAILED to tell our dining staff at accessAtlanta that the online capsule listed for Buckhead Diner still had Kevin Rathbun listed as its executive chef.

What a whack in the head ... Buckhead Diner. As we busied ourselves correcting the issue, I couldn't help but wonder when I had eaten there last. High school? No — just after I got married? Christmas shopping in 1991?

Brant Sanderlin/Staff (ENLARGE)
The more things change, the more they stay the same: Buckhead Diner's chips still come drenched in Maytag blue cheese.
Brant Sanderlin/Staff (ENLARGE)
Sweet-and-spicy thai chili calamari (top), thyme-roasted chicken and dirty martinis are still signature offerings at the restaurant where families now clamor to get seated.
Brant Sanderlin/Staff (ENLARGE)
Brant Sanderlin/Staff (ENLARGE)
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I couldn't remember. This neon beacon of blue cheese over house-made chips was something of my nearly forgotten past. Kevin Rathbun, who as executive chef gave the aging icon its last 15 minutes of fame back in 2001, has a restaurant empire of his own now. Liz and Elton have moved on, too. So, I suspected, had the rest of Atlanta.

With an appetite, my best new pumps and extra lip gloss in hand, I ventured into what was once the it place of all it places. What I found was that for some, it still is.

After nearly 20 years (the restaurant opened in 1987), the valet, on a weekday evening, is still four cars deep. The masses covering the 3D marbled floor tile are still packed five deep, everyone clamoring for a table. It's just that these days the crowds are more likely to be families eating out than the famous.

Could it be that the diner that isn't a diner at all fits a new framework that works just fine for some folks? Could it be that Buckhead Diner has, omigod, grown up?

Maybe so. The wait staff in starched steward jackets, the doting staff, the dirty martinis — and of course those chips drenched in a thick mantle of Maytag blue cheese — Atlanta really wouldn't be the same without this place. Just because Britney's photo will probably never take its place alongside Jimmy Buffet's on the diner's wall of fame doesn't seem to matter to anyone anymore.

They've come for the veal meatloaf, thick slices of herbed-up denseness with a suspiciously glossy orange sauce that's almost as neon as the diner's shiny exterior.

They've come for the mounds of fluffy mashed potatoes that seem to accompany everything, albeit disguised as puree, or laced with celery.

In one corner, a table of 40-ish women, shopping bags afoot, are munching down on the restaurant's ever-popular, East-meets-West take on fried calamari rife with sweet-and-sour, sesame seed-loaded flavor. Add two wedge salads with

bacon and more blue cheese (that they can split between them), and they've got their own version of the happy meal.

At the table across the room an entire family has ordered the super-crunchy, especially yummy fried chicken (a blue plate special only on Wednesdays and Sundays because it takes chef Joey Riley's staff three days to brine and season the birds). More mashed potatoes, this time with carrots and green beans.

I'm happy nestled into a booth with girlfriends, sipping a martini and chomping through a wedge salad of my own, plus a hearty helping of the braised beef short ribs bathed in another of the kitchen's shiny sauces. Salmon over a fun little medley of artichokes, feta cheese and cukes works, too. We have to sit on our hands not to finish the mountain of cheesy chips in front of us. And three of us eat for about $100.

The desserts need their own ZIP code, and the signature white chocolate banana cream pie lacks the pizazz its reputation calls for — mushy crust, lackluster custard — all too sweet to be good anyway. The chocolate cake could be used as a doorstop, both for its size and texture.

But the peach bread pudding has that sticky-sweet goo factor that makes anyone who's spent the better part of the day tackling the crowds at Lenox Square happy they ordered dessert.

There's nothing en vogue about Buckhead Diner anymore. The it crowd moved out back when Madonna was showing off her private parts, not her adoption papers.

Still, there seems to a be a whole lot of eatin' goin' on. Besides, where the heck else can you get a black cow for $3?