Phin's Restaurant opened in May of 2007, in historic Scituate Harbor. Named in honor of chef/owner Aaron Pratt's ancestor Phineas Pratt, Phin's brings hearty food with a classy touch to Scituate's Front Street, now serving breakfast and lunch and dinner daily. Phin's is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.

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When Phineas Pratt arrived on the South Shore of Massachusetts in 1622, stepping off the ship Swallow some 25 miles or so from where Phin’s Restaurant now stands, he was not very happy with his dining options. The men on the Swallow, like the Pilgrims who met them, had been promised bountiful forests and plenty of food. What they found was an inhospitable land and hunger. As you can imagine, they felt a little swindled!

“Some indiscreet men,” remembered Phineas in 1662, “hoping to encourage their friends to come to them, wrote letters concerning the great plenty of fish, fowl and deer, not considering that the wild savages were many times hungry, yet have a better skill to catch such things than English men have. The Adventurers, willing to save their monies, sent them weakly provided of victuals, as many more after them did the like; and that was the great cause of famine.”

Good food back then was hard to find. And unfortunately, Phineas was a joiner, not a chef, and was better at making furniture than Eggs Benedict or Caesar Salad. But among the items in his will he left “2 bras skillitts”, “2 Iorn potts”, “2 Iorn keetells” and a “fring pan”, so we like to think his descendants may have inherited a little of our love of cooking from old Phin.

Today, the nuts, corn and shellfish Phineas gathered to stave off hunger have evolved into Panzanella Salad, Paninis and Pasta Primavera, and the blustery coast of Massachusetts has a safe haven in Phin’s Restaurant, where we can gather with our friends and families and enjoy a hearty meal without worrying about an attack by angry natives.

This restaurant was founded, therefore, in honor of our ancestor Phineas—one of the first colonists in Massachusetts, and a man who would definitely have appreciated a good hearty meal. If Phineas had been able to pull up a seat at Phin’s when he’d first arrived on the South Shore, we’re certain he would have been a lot happier with the victuals he found.