Open daily from 8 AM · 9 AM weekends

A Quebec chef took over the Dilly Duck and put poutine on the menu.

Jacques Talbot spent forty years in the restaurant business in Canada and ran four places in Quebec City. He got there from a small town with a hundred dollars his mother gave him. This summer he sold his share of all of it, and took over the Main Avenue storefront that was The Dilly Duck Shop for nine years — because at this point he wanted something small enough to walk to every table himself.

Breakfast from 8, weekends from 9: omelets, crepes, French toast buried under cream cheese and berries. Lunch to 3 on weekdays, 2 on weekends: rotisserie pork, roast beef with caramelized onions, a ham and cheese à la française on baguette. And the poutine — real curds, hand-cut fries, never frozen. Bread from Wave Hill, English muffins from SoNo Baking Co., bagels shipped down from St-Viateur in Montreal.

666 Main Ave, Ste 100 · 203-289-0430

The Norwalk Seaport Association has been running this since 1978, and it is still the biggest weekend on the city calendar. Gates at Veterans Memorial Park open Friday at 6 PM and the festival runs to 11. Saturday it goes all day, 11 AM to 11 PM, with Parmalee on the Main Stage at 8:30. Sunday is 11 to 8, with JUMP — America’s Van Halen Experience at 4 PM, and children 12 and under get in free with a paid adult, which is the single best reason to save the family day for the end. Expect the usual: raw bar and fried everything, craft and food vendors, carnival rides, and several stages of free music once you are through the gate. Parking near Seaview fills early — walk in from SoNo if you can, or plan on the shuttle. Buy ahead online; the gate line on Saturday afternoon is the part nobody enjoys.

Tickets & lineup →

19th Annual Old-fashioned Flea Market

The Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum puts its flea market on the lawn for the nineteenth year: antiques, repurposed furniture, jewelry, farm-to-table goods, food trucks, mini-tours of the mansion, and the gift shop open. It is free to walk through and proceeds go back into the museum’s programs. If the festival crowd is more than you want on Sunday, this is the quieter half of the same weekend — and it is a ten-minute drive from Seaview Avenue if you decide to do both.

Flea market details →

September 2026 NHRL Open

Norwalk has a purpose-built combat-robotics arena on Water Street and most of the city still does not know it. The National Havoc Robot League runs a public tournament there Saturday — hundreds of builders from around the world, spinning weapons, a Golden Dumpster trophy, and a qualifying spot at the world championships in December. It is loud, it is legitimately violent toward machinery, and it is the best thing to bring a nine-year-old to in this city. Doors at 10 AM; check the site for tickets and the day’s bracket.

NHRL events →

The festival is not really about oysters, and it never was. In 1978 a group of residents formed the Norwalk Seaport Association with one job in front of them: save the Sheffield Island Lighthouse, an 1868 stone keeper’s house out at the mouth of the harbor that the federal government had decommissioned in 1902 and left to weather. They needed money, so they threw a party on the waterfront and sold oysters — the thing Norwalk had been known for since the 1800s, when the harbor was thick with sail-powered oyster schooners like the one painted on the wall above and the city was one of the biggest shellfish ports in the country. The party worked. The Association bought the lighthouse and its island, and forty-eight years later the fundraiser has outgrown the thing it was raising funds for. So when you are paying for a dozen on the half shell at Veterans Memorial Park this weekend, that is what the money is doing. Look south past the boats. The light is out there.

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