Run something in this spot.

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SoNo Saturday Market — the season’s first Washington Street takeover

The market runs the last Saturday of the month, May through August, and May 30 is the opener. The city closes Washington Street between the train bridge and the Webster lot and fills it with thirty-plus local makers — Grumpy Dumpling, Hoffman Bread, Kitchen Witch Botanicals, the Sew Queen, Dippin Chicken and a couple dozen more — plus live music and lawn games, 11 to 3. Free, dog-friendly, walkable from the train. Park at the Webster lot or the Haviland deck; the street itself is closed 8 to 4. The single biggest thing happening in town this week.

Vendor list & map →

Sheffield Island ferry — now running the full summer schedule

Last week was the season’s opening; this week the Seaport Association settles into its real summer rhythm — Wednesday through Sunday now through early September. The midweek sailings are the secret: same harbor cruise past Greens Ledge and Peck Ledge, same 1868 lighthouse and nature trails on Sheffield, a fraction of the weekend crowd. Three hours on the water, $35 adults, out of 90 Water Street. Pick a Wednesday, take the afternoon, and have the island half to yourself.

Schedule & tickets →

Nik’s Place is back — the East Norwalk clam shack reopens after two years

The summer staple at 86 Gregory Boulevard went dark for two years, and as of May 1 it’s serving again — 11 to 8, walk-up window, the East Norwalk corner that locals have been quietly mourning. No parade, no ribbon-cutting; it just turned the griddle back on. The first warm-weather week with it open again is the right week to go reintroduce yourself. Bring cash, bring patience, bring an appetite for the kind of place that doesn’t need a website.

The reopening story →

For a decade the story was South Norwalk — Washington Street was where you opened if you wanted foot traffic and a buzz. Lately the smart money has been moving half a mile north. The Wall Street corridor, with the city’s Phase 1 streetscape work underway since late 2024, has become the place new operators actually sign leases: lower rents than SoNo, a captured weekend crowd from the River Street Sunset Bazaar starting in June, and a stretch that finally feels like it’s being invested in rather than waited out. If you only know Norwalk dining as SoNo, this is the summer to walk Wall Street and see what’s gone in.

The dining directory →

Norwalk built the country’s first steam-powered oyster fleet. In the 1870s, when the rest of the coast was still tonging oysters by hand from sailing sloops, Norwalk captains bolted steam engines onto their dredge boats and worked the beds faster than anyone alive had seen. By the 1890s the harbor was one of the busiest oyster ports on Earth, and the steamer hull they perfected here set the template the whole industry copied. The boats are mostly gone; the reputation that made “oyster town” stick is not.

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