SO THICK YOU CAN CUT IT…

SPATS DALE WAMSTAD, who calls himself “Del Frisco” and runs the Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steak House on Lem-mon; and MIKE PIPER, who does not call himself “Del Frisco” and runs the Mike’s Del Frisco’s at The Crescent, have two things in common: their manly, dark-paneled beef-eateries, and their eagerness to rash each other in the media. There’s enough self-serving here to open a dozen Sizzlers. Piper-not-Frisco will even tell you that you should take his ri-val’s ads with a large grain of salt. Take the one on page 132 of this very magazine, for instance, where something called “The Knife & Fork Club of America Inc.” exalts Wamstad-Frisco’s steak-house as the second best in the whole nation. The ad is signed by “food editor” Jack Roach, who slams “the clone at The Crescent,” i.e.,

Piper’s place. Piper-not-Frisco claims that Wamstad-Frisco created The Knife & Fork Club so he could write himself the kind of reviews he deserved. Could it be?

A secretary at The Knife & Fork Club’s Houston number said there was no one in the office who knew anything about the “club’-no marketing director, no president. JustRoach. We wanted to speak to Roach, who was out, then called back and missed us, and then “could not be reached” from mid-August to mid-September. Three other cow palaces on the K&F list, including top-ranked Peter Luger in Brooklyn, had never heard of the club. Neither had the editors of Restaurant Hospitality magazine and Gourmet. Hmm.