The wonderful thing about traveling with someone who is up for almost anything, anytime, is that you have the option of ordering foods you normally would shy away from. Not only are you more willing to try exotic items in general, but if you end up getting something you're not too keen on, odds are your companion will like it enough to finish it.

So when Tamarind and I decided to stop at a little trattoria near our apartment late one night, we decided to do a mixed appetizer dish, under the seemingly-innocent name of “Antipasti misti”. I had previously read about how to stretch a budget by ordering dinner “una per due”, meaning shared portions, so when the waiter responded to my ordering by asking “Per due?”, I promptly said “Si.” We then finished by ordering a pizza each for our entrée.

The wine and mineral water flowed freely in preparation for our meal to come. But when the waiter returned with not one, not two, but three plates of mixed sea creatures, we wondered exactly what we had gotten ourselves into. Turns out that there was two kinds of “Antipasti misti” on the menu, regular vegetable and meat plates (the one I thought I ordered), and “Antipasti misti dei mare”, meaning “from the sea”. Not what we were expecting, to say the least. Not only that, but by ordering “per due”, rather than “una per due”, we had inadvertently ordered two servings.

The three plates of baby octopus, anchovies and raw salmon looked quite imposing, considering we had expected one plate of spinach, zucchini, and other "simpler" fare. But always being up for a challenge, we dug in at breakneck pace. Though I would have never ordered it if I knew what I was getting, these little things were simply divine. The anchovies were seasoned perfectly and not too fishy, as I always expected anchovies to be. The baby octopus was cooked in a fabulous sauce to perfection. The raw salmon on toasted bread was wonderfully light and fresh.

As we were enjoying our already bountiful feast, the waiter brought out yet ANOTHER plate, this time with fabulous little tarts containing potatoes and who-knows-what else.

Finally, after gorging ourselves on appetizers, the waiter returned with two more plates. It was only then that we remembered the pizzas that we had ordered. So the pizzas were set before us, and slowly we attempted to do as much damage to them as possible. Needless to say, they were still mostly intact when we left, having already eaten an army's worth of Italian sea delicacies.

The bill was another story. Instead of the simple 10 Euro appetizer we ordered, the sea appetizers were 15 Euros each. Accounting for the pizzas, wine, water and coperto, we left with a damage of 65 Euros. Though we didn't plan on spending $80 on dinner that night, we definitely didn't expect to leave with a story we'd remember for years to come.