"I'll have the spaghetti."

When you're ordering food at a restaurant, when does it become the fillet, the lamb, the whatever? At what point do you go from the omission of an article to insertion of the definite?

"Yes, I'll have the lobster."

But the hamburger? Never.

"I'll just get a hamburger."

And fries, right? No article. Perhaps you would say "and some fries," but never the.

I had never thought of this until Tom's friend Martha expounded upon it for five minutes a few weeks back in Philly. Actually, she talked about it for maybe 20 seconds, and I wouldn't let it drop. It is a brilliant observation.

"When you have to worry about what you're wearing, that's when you go with 'the,'" Matt McCarron offered. He's the one who writes the blurbs on the labels of Vitamin Water, in case you didn't realize.

Martha, the creator of this theory, basically agrees.

"I think it depends on the restaurant, not the dish."

Exactly right. They may cook steaks at Applebee's, but it would just feel uncomfortable to say "the Bourbon Street Steak." You're not hearing "the's" dropped at Applebee's.