You are learning substitution: you will read the scene it happens in, learn 10 words and phrases, take apart the pattern behind them (substitution: pro-forms and replacement structures), hear them in a conversation, rehearse them, and finish by saying one thing out loud to be graded.
Katz's Delicatessen, Lower East Side, the famous movie scene counter
Everyone knows the scene. Meg Ryan at a corner table in Katz's Delicatessen. Billy Crystal across from her. She demonstrates — loudly — that certain pleasures can be performed convincingly. A woman at a nearby table turns to the waiter and says, 'I'll have what she's having.' The line became immortal, and so did the deli.
What makes the line work linguistically is substitution. 'What she's having' replaces the entire order — the sandwich, the experience, the performance. It's a pro-form doing the work of a paragraph. And it's funny precisely because the substitution is ambiguous: is she ordering food, or something else entirely?
I stood at the exact table last Tuesday. A small sign marks the spot: 'Where Harry met Sally... hope you have what she had.' Tourists photograph it; regulars ignore it. I ordered the pastrami on rye — the one every first-timer should try. Was it overhyped? Anything but.
Other delis in New York try to replicate the Katz's experience, but few have done so successfully. The ones that come closest understand that it isn't just the recipe — it's the accumulation of history, culture, and yes, a single line of movie dialogue that turned a sandwich into a legend.