Weston's Tavern Season Runs Through the Golden Ball This Year
November 5, 2026
November 5, 2026
"Taverns were central to Colonial New England towns not only for food and libations but also news and a warm bed. Most every town had a tavern for travelers to rest at and locals to gather and socialize."
That line comes from the Golden Ball Tavern Museum, which is promoting a November talk on colonial tavern food. It also describes the role Weston has been trying to fill at the other end of Boston Post Road for years. The restaurant planned for the Josiah Smith Tavern at 358 Boston Post Road will not be serving anyone this holiday season. The museum at 662 Boston Post Road will be, in its own way. It has a free supper talk, Sunday tours and a week in December when much of the town's civic life fills its rooms.
The restaurant is called The Woods. Its operator, Boston Urban Hospitality, is led by restaurateur and Weston resident Brian Piccini. In an October 17 update, the Friends of Josiah Smith Tavern said the construction documents were done and a contractor had been chosen. The project has approvals from Historic New England, the Planning Board, the Historic Commission, the Permanent Building Committee and the Zoning Board of Appeals. The Friends said the operator was ready to apply for a building permit. The lease amendment and escrow agreement were still unsigned at that point.
The Weston Observer reported on October 23 that a Select Board letter dated October 8 asked the Friends and Piccini to sign new terms by October 15 or face enforcement under the existing lease, which could include termination. The Friends sent back proposed changes, mainly about when the $1 million escrow would be funded and how construction progress would be checked. The paper reported that the board's chair said the board might step away from the project but still believed an agreement was possible.
Whatever comes next, those talks are about construction terms. A tavern in Weston this November and December means the one built in 1768.
Isaac Jones built the Golden Ball Tavern on the Boston Post Road in 1768. The museum describes him as a Loyalist whose family stayed in Weston through the Revolution. The museum has not frozen the building at one moment in time. It presents the house as a changing record of six generations of the Jones family, so the rooms show how a working building changed over two centuries instead of a single restored date.
That approach suits the season ahead. A house that has always been altered by the people using it is a natural place for a town to come in and redecorate every room. Visitors who bring guests from out of town will find a Visitors Center orientation in English, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean and Haitian Creole.
The museum is open on a regular weekday schedule, with two special November dates added:
For anyone reading this on publish day, today's Thursday tour runs until 4 p.m.
The November 13 talk ties most directly to the tavern's original job. Foodways historian Stacy Booth will describe the dishes that Massachusetts taverns served around the start of the Revolutionary War, and what an 18th-century traveler might have found on the table after a day on the road.
Booth has almost 20 years of experience reenacting and presenting to the public. She focuses on 17th- and 18th-century New England foodways, including cooking demonstrations. She runs Forgotten Recipes, which has presented, cooked or set up displays at libraries, museums and historic houses for the past six years, and she is working on a master's in gastronomy at Boston University.
A grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council pays for the program, so it is free. Space is limited, and seats are reserved through Eventbrite. It takes place on a Friday evening in the Visitors Center rather than the historic rooms, so it fits easily after work.
Trimming the Tavern is the big event of the museum's year, and this is where the "locals gather" part of the tavern's history shows up again. This year's theme is "A Winter's Tale." Each room, upstairs and down, will be decorated around a different holiday book or story, from classics to children's tales, using seasonal greenery.
The Country Garden Club of Weston leads the effort, and the museum says the partnership on its holiday open house goes back almost 60 years. The rooms are decorated by Weston's own organizations:
Last year's theme, "Here's to the Red, White and Blue!", marked the nation's 250th anniversary and drew more than 500 guests, according to the museum. A walk through the house shows how the library, the farm, the senior center, the art center and the garden clubs each read a theme. Few other places in town put all of them under one roof.
Trimming runs eight days, from Saturday, December 5 through Saturday, December 12. The town calendar lists it as free and family-friendly. One evening is ticketed separately, and the opening weekend shares the calendar with a show at Town Hall.
| Date | Event | Hours | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sat., Dec. 5 | Trimming the Tavern | 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. | Free |
| Sat., Dec. 5 | Weston Friendly Society, Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella, Sears Auditorium, Town Hall | 7:30 p.m. | See listing |
| Sun., Dec. 6 | Trimming the Tavern | 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. | Free |
| Sun., Dec. 6 | Cinderella, Sears Auditorium | 2 p.m. | See listing |
| Mon., Dec. 7 – Sat., Dec. 12 | Trimming the Tavern | 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. daily | Free |
| Tue., Dec. 8 | Twilight at the Tavern, candlelit | 6 – 8 p.m. | $15 adults; $5 ages 5–17 and all under 21 |
The Sunday hours are shorter, ending at 2 p.m. That is also when the Cinderella matinee begins at Town Hall, so a family planning to see both on December 6 should go to the tavern in the morning.
Twilight at the Tavern on Tuesday, December 8, is the slower way to see the rooms. It is a self-guided candlelit walk through the decorated house. The ticket includes Trimming admission, on-site parking, a glass of wine or seltzer, and light snacks. Adults who want an alcoholic drink need a photo ID. Tickets are sold through Eventbrite. The museum describes the evening as a chance to see the tavern at a calmer pace. A Tuesday night after the opening weekend is a good time for it.
If you are hosting out-of-town guests in early December, the simplest plan is a weekday visit to the Golden Ball, when the rooms are open six days in a row. The free open-house days and the candlelit evening give you two quite different ways to see the same decorated house.
At Leah Hart, we follow Weston's calendar the way our clients live it, from the Thursday tours on Boston Post Road to the Country Garden Club's December rooms and the latest on the Josiah Smith Tavern. If you'd like help seeing how places like these shape daily life in the parts of town you're considering, let's connect.
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