A Builder Says $1.5 Million. Chillingsworth Hasn't Said May.

BREWSTER · ROUTE 6A

Its 2026 season ends Nov. 28. Nitzi Rabin relayed a builder's estimate to the Select Board and made no commitment about reopening in May.

5 min read · A Celebrate Lower Cape spotlight

If you've ever saved a birthday or an anniversary for a long dinner on Route 6A, there's a fair chance the night is filed in your family under one word. Chillingsworth. Seventy years into that word's run, the people who keep it going went to a public meeting to ask for a few more weeks.

On Oct. 19, the Cape Cod Chronicle reported, the staff "turned out in force" at the Brewster Select Board. What follows is the Chronicle's account of that night.

The room they call the living room

Kathleen Morris, who oversees the front of the restaurant, put the request plainly. "This is his legacy season and our goal tonight is to see it to the end," she said. "His" is Robert "Nitzi" Rabin, the chef who bought the place with his wife in 1976 and is closing out his 50th year of ownership.

She didn't argue about the building. "Let me be clear, all of us at Chillingsworth know the work that needs to be done to the room we call the living room," she said. The question in front of the board was how the season would end, and behind it sat a bigger one for anyone with a Chillingsworth night of their own: can the restaurant come back in May?

Twenty-four hours on a voicemail

Building Inspector Tom Delaney gave the town's side. "We respect the charm of things but they have to be safe," he told the board. He and Fire Prevention Officer Scott Romer said it was unsafe for anyone to use the second floor, where the floor was buckling and joists were broken, and that they required a structural engineer or building professional to make a full assessment.

The history runs back a year. Delaney said last year's inspection noted dilapidated stairs to the second story, which were decommissioned along with any habitable space up there. The Chronicle reports what came next. The board extended a temporary license through Dec. 31 once temporary safety measures were taken. In October Delaney told the town the building had failed its annual safety inspection.

The temporary fixes, he said, were only meant to last until a permanent plan was proposed. "Nothing has happened here and I had to look at basically a nonperformance of what was agreed upon," Delaney said. Morris said it was the restaurant's understanding that those fixes would carry it through the season, and that the owner was told by voicemail, with 24 hours' notice, that he had to shut down. Delaney said they were never told that, and that a shutdown would take action by the board.

After a lengthy discussion, the board agreed to let the season finish, with limits. The bar and main dining room could stay open. The older section stays closed because of the safety concerns, and the restaurant closes for the season Nov. 28.

"A crapshoot to go much higher"

Rabin spoke to the condition of the place himself. "Clearly there are some problems in the old part of the building that are extensive," he said. A "highly regarded construction company" had told him it would cost $1.5 million to open next year, "and after that it would be a crapshoot to go much higher because the building is old and would require all kinds of construction to support the upper level."

That's an estimate, as Rabin relayed it, and not a budget. Building officials said the serious structural issues will need to be addressed before the restaurant can reopen in 2027, and the Chronicle reported that the building inspector had not approved a long-term fix. At the meeting, Rabin made no commitment one way or another about next May. The paper said it couldn't reach him before deadline.

Nine years old in 1689

Rabin gave the board a date, too. He said the building goes back to 1689, originally the estate of "Foster Chillingsworth," who the Chronicle's account says lived from 1680 to 1754. The genealogies turn that name around. WikiTree, citing an 1899 Foster genealogy, has Deacon Chillingsworth Foster born in Marshfield in 1680, and a Clark University genealogy has him dying in Harwich in December 1764, after years as Harwich's man in the General Court. Brewster didn't split from Harwich until 1803.

The Brewster Historical Society says the restaurant's name traces to the house, once his home, and that Foster Road got its name because he lived there. Do the arithmetic on 1689 and the deacon was nine. We couldn't find a record that settles how the house came to him, so the 1689 date stands here as Rabin's.

The restaurant's own history is easier to pin down. A Great Chefs biography says friends of James Beard founded it in 1956, and the Chronicle says Robert Stevenson ran it until the Rabins took over. Rabin first worked there as a college waiter and came back as an apprentice chef. Patricia Rabin trained in pastry, the biography says, and became known for the desserts, and the two took a six-month winter course at the Cordon Bleu. By 2005, Boston magazine was telling people to skip the seven-course dinner for the Sunday brunch.

The licenses run through Dec. 31

Nothing in the Chronicle's account has anyone saying Chillingsworth is closing for good. "All we're hoping to do is to continue for the last few days of the season," Rabin said. The restaurant usually opens in May and closes after Thanksgiving, and its website, on a page that looks years out of date, says "The last of the season is always the Saturday of Thanksgiving Weekend." This year that's Nov. 28, so the date by itself is an ordinary one.

The next one may not be. The Chronicle reported that the restaurant's common victualler and liquor licenses run through Dec. 31 and are normally issued in December for the following year. Rabin's request to change his license from hotel/innkeeper to restaurant was still pending before the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission at the time of that report. This is the same board that once asked about the onion rings at a license hearing, and the town's Agenda Center lists the Oct. 19 meeting and its video.

In March we asked which restaurant you still miss, and the answers came back as first nights and first jobs. This time the place has a season still running, so we'd rather ask now. Hit reply with the year and the memory, and we'll ask your permission before running any of it. What was your night at Chillingsworth, and who was at the table?

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