From the DWT Annals of Food Science: We can send a man to the moon and split the atom, but it seems those fish and fries just can't be separated

I bet not many people remember much about Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces (1970) except what everybody remembers (sort of): the scene in which Jack Nicholson as Bobby Dupea tries to order toast in a diner whose menu doesn't offer this particular exotic delicacy. It goes like this (courtesy of Wikipedia, with just a tad of touching up):

BOBBY: I'd like a plain omelet. No potatoes, tomatoes instead. A cup of coffee and wheat toast.
WAITRESS: No substitutions.
BOBBY: What do you mean? You don't have any tomatoes?
WAITRESS: Only what's on the menu. You can have a number two--a plain omelet. It comes with cottage fries, and rolls.
BOBBY: Yeah, I know what it comes with, but it's not what I want.
WAITRESS: Well, I'll come back when you make up your mind.
BOBBY: Wait a minute, I have made up my mind. I'd like a plain omelet, no potatoes on the plate. A cup of coffee, and a side order of wheat toast.
WAITRESS: I'm sorry, we don't have any side orders of toast. I'll give you a English muffin or a coffee roll.
BOBBY: What do you mean, you don't make side orders of toast? You make sandwiches, don't you?
WAITRESS: Would you like to talk to the manager?
BOBBY: You've got bread. And a toaster of some kind?
WAITRESS: I don't make the rules.
BOBBY: OK, I'll make it as easy for you as I can. I'd like an omelet, plain, and a chicken salad sandwich on wheat toast, no mayonnaise, no butter, no lettuce. And a cup of coffee.
WAITRESS: A number two. Chicken sal san, hold the butter, the lettuce, the mayonnaise. And a cup of coffee. Anything else?
BOBBY: Yeah, now all you have to do is hold the chicken, bring me the toast, give me a check for the chicken salad sandwich, and you haven't broken any rules.
WAITRESS: You want me to hold the chicken, huh?
BOBBY: I want you to hold it between your knees.

And from that point, the situation actually deteriorates.

This comes to mind because I got off the phone earlier with Howie, who at present is on an island off the coast of Georgia (Saint Simons, maybe? or maybe not) on more or less blog-related business, and he's suffering even more than usual these days when he lets himself be dragged out of his personal private blogging chair at home. For one thing, he's virtually Net-inaccessible. I'm sure he'll have something to say about the trip, but for the moment I have to share this story.

The official gathering doesn't start till tomorrow. At that point it seems possible that some effort may be made to accommodate his, shall we say, particular food preferences, which might be described in one word as: raw. At the moment he's at the mercy of the local cuisine, and you don't often hear about raw-food aficionados placing themselves at the mercy of non-big-city Deep Southern cookin'.

They were a party of four tonight, Howie's party, and when someone suggested "seafood," he figured he could work with that, as he often does in places like Los Angeles and New York. However, the sea creatures who find their way to a seafood restaurant on Saint Simons Island, Georgia, have apparently made the journey for only one purpose: to wind up in a deep frier.

It turned out, though, that Howie wasn't the prime problem eater of his party. One of his companions found something on the menu she thought could work for her, only without the establishment's proffered French fries. She asked to have her entree served without the fries.

Which turned out to be impossible. Unfortunately, I doubt that we'll ever get a transcript of the negotiation as exact as the one Wikipedia has provided for the Five Easy Pieces scene. (This is just one of the many ways in which real life is inferior to the movies.) Wouldn't you really love to know exactly how the conversation proceeded?

I have no doubt that the fries-averse diner tried every conversational gambit she could think of to accomplish the goal that in some places is achieved with a simple "Hold the fries." And yet, apparently, each of her approaches ended in the same place: Nope, can't be done. Sorry, no way.

I suggested that it was perhaps a point of professional pride on the part of the chef, who considers the French fries an integral part of the order, and therefore simply couldn't in good conscience disrupt the harmony of the whole merely to accommodate the whim of some lunatic customer.

Howie said it wasn't the kind of place that was likely to have a "chef."

Nevertheless, I like to think that the full resources, the full culinary expertise of the kitchen staff were brought to bear on the problem, albeit to no avail in the end. If indeed no chef's honor was at stake, I like to think that expert assistance was duly sought.

I imagine that a conference call was hastily arranged bringing together all the Nobel Prize winners in Georgia. These, the finest scientific minds of the region (perhaps joined by all the Nobelists of northern Florida--it appears the island is closer to Jacksonville than to any major Georgian urban center), put the deepest reaches of their imagination at the service of the fish-and-fries conjunction and concluded, apparently, that while we can split atoms into atomettes or whatever, the fish and fries have some sort of physical bond that defies dis-integration.

Eventually, it appears, the diner's order was brought, whereupon she proceeded to scrape the fries off the plate, to the astonishment and horror of onlookers. Luckily, though, at least on this occasion, those dreaded potato atomettes don't seem to have ruptured or exploded or imploded or whatever the heck they were expected to do.

It could just have been luck, though. The obvious moral: Kids, don't try this at home!