If we can afford a little leniency when a big festival draws gigantic crowds and puts a restaurant and all its servers under undue stress, we should probably give a little extra praise when a restaurant handles the spectacle with ease. This past weekend, downtown Atlanta was host to a pair of gigantic crowd-generators: the Dragon*Con convention and the Chic-fil-A “Kickoff Classic,” this year between LSU and North Carolina. Jalapeno Charlie’s, located on the corner of Peachtree and International and across the street from the Hard Rock Cafe, handled the crunch extremely well. We arrived during a comparatively slow period, so it wasn’t too wild, and we agreed that their food was not bad, and the service was excellent.

Dragon*Con brings buddies to town from all over the southeast, and Marie and I get the chance to say hello to friends and family who’ve come from Athens, Jacksonville, Memphis, Nashville and Starkville, among other places. The actual paid attendance of the con is something like 40,000. Unpaid attendance of people who’ve come to ogle the thousands of costumers is probably about the same. Our friends from Nashville are frequently among them. Tory, whom you may recall from our last trip to that awesome city leading us down an alleyway past dumpsters to a Greek place for lunch, had colored her hair Draco Malfoy-blonde but was wearing a different house’s colors. Looking like Draco is all the rage in Gryffindor this year, apparently. I’ve known her and Brooke (hair colored blue and purple) for ten years now and they’ve taken me to many good restaurants in Nashville, and were already nailing down some places for me to go when I head back that way later in the year. Fortunately, one of those trips should be on a Wednesday so I can enjoy the weekend-unfriendly Mas Tacos.

Anyway, Marie went down to get right in the thick of the Dragon*Con madness and, for Sunday night supper, rounded up her brother along with Brooke, Tory, Brooke’s boyfriend Matt, and their friend Holly from Kentucky. I got to the restaurant before them and snagged us a large table, although not, sadly, one on the balcony overlooking Peachtree.

Jalapeno Charlie’s is a chain-in-waiting. It’s a “concept” owned by the people behind Fire of Brazil, and while the only location, currently, is in downtown Atlanta – in the space just above Fire of Brazil, in fact – you can tell that the corporate minds are looking forward to open the new stores in other cities soon.

As for the food, it’s not at all bad, but the menu, which purports to offer “Mexican-Latin fusion,” kind of needs a kick in the backside. Really, this town is quite used to having complementary chips and salsa brought to the table; charging five bucks for it in a restaurant like this is just tacky.

And that’s a shame, because the food is quite good, with a number of neat dishes. Marie’s brother, Karl, really went for the interesting concoctions. He shared an appetizer of fried plantains topped with chicken and melted cheese that was quite good, and just enough of a tweak from the usual “cheese nachos” that you always see at these sorts of places. But his entree was the real surprise. Called a molcajete, this was a bubbling “soup” served in a thick black bowl shaped, for some reason, like a pig. It was a stew of chicken in a tomato-based sauce with carrots and celery and served so darn hot it needed to sit for a few minutes before Karl could dig in.

I had the fish tacos, tilapia with a mild ranchero sauce, and they were very good, even though they provided more evidence, as though more were needed, that I probably need to take a class on how to photograph food, because every time I try to shoot tacos, the picture looks awful. The only failing on my dish was the half-thought inclusion of a handful of blue corn chips. Not only were these tasteless and bland, but they drove home how nice it would have been to have a nice basket of fresh chips and salsa. Marie had a chicken quesadilla and was very satisfied with it. They really piled the ingredients high and didn’t scrimp on the fillings.

To be honest, I was enjoying the company so much that I’d have suffered a far worse meal with no complaints. It’s always wonderful to visit with out-of-town friends, and I think that the Jalapeno Charlie’s crew did a great job managing the weekend crush. If one ever opens in your town, it’s probably worth a visit. Just bring lots of friends and plan to talk about the latest Doctor Who rumors and Harry Potter costumes.