Peterborough is doing that thing it does rather well.

Rain.

Not dramatic rain. Nothing anybody will make a documentary about.

Just enough to make the city centre look grey and ensure everyone who walks through the door is slightly damp.

Then you step inside Fratelli in Rivergate.

And suddenly Sicily feels considerably closer.

Fratelli is a family-run Italian restaurant with Sicilian roots, and that's important because this doesn't feel like an Italian restaurant assembled by somebody working through a corporate checklist.

The food has somewhere to come from.

The family has somewhere to come from.

And the deli counter is sitting there making a fairly convincing argument that dinner doesn't necessarily have to end when you leave.

First problem: deciding what you're actually having

Pizza sounds easy.

Until somebody else orders pasta.

Then another plate goes past.

Then you start looking at what the next table is eating.

This is how menus become dangerous.

A pizza lands on the table with that combination you're hoping for — crisp around the edges, softer towards the middle, toppings doing the work rather than disappearing beneath half a kilo of cheese.

Someone tears off a piece.

Someone else immediately asks for a bit.

You ordered your own.

Apparently that is no longer relevant.

Then the pasta arrives and the pizza person starts looking at that too.

Italian food has always had a remarkable ability to expose the weakness in the concept of individual ordering.

Sicily isn't just decoration here

That's what makes Fratelli more interesting than simply finding somewhere for pizza.

Its Sicilian identity runs through the place.

You see it in the food, in the ingredients and in the deli side of the business.

The deli is particularly dangerous after you've eaten.

You'd think being full would provide some protection against buying more food.

It doesn't.

There are Italian ingredients and things to take home, which means you can finish dinner and immediately begin making plans for another one.

This is presumably how Sicily gets you twice.

Then somebody says, “Shall we have dessert?”

Nobody needs dessert.

Let's establish that.

You've had pizza.

You've stolen some of somebody else's pasta.

There may have been bread involved.

You are not experiencing a nutritional emergency.

And yet an Italian dessert menu arrives and suddenly everybody has discovered a small, previously unknown compartment reserved exclusively for something sweet.

Coffee appears.

The conversation continues.

Nobody is looking particularly urgently towards the door.

Outside, Peterborough is probably still raining.

Which, by now, doesn't seem terribly important.

That's the reason to come

There are plenty of occasions when eating out is functional.

You need dinner. You choose somewhere. You eat. You leave.

Fratelli works better when you don't treat it like that.

Come with somebody who will share.

Order the thing you nearly didn't.

Ask what's good.

Leave enough time for coffee.

And have a look at the deli before you go.

Because for an hour or two, the weather can do whatever it likes.

Peterborough is outside. Sicily has dinner covered.

Tell us your experiences at Fratelli in RIvergate by commenting below.