Nightlife in Danbury

Owners Aura Showah and Douglas Waterbury attribute the success of Widow Brown's Cafe, which has been in business for more than 35 years, to culinary consistency, a family-friendly ambiance, and an eclectic menu that has earned the eatery a feature in the News-Times. While two-handing a burger or steaming sandwich, patrons can peruse the chalkboard around the fully stocked bar for a list of weekly events, such as trivia, karaoke, and raucous tax-preparation luaus. Wooden wall panels glow in the light of wall-mounted TVs as forks venture south for American comfort fare or globetrot with Asian-, Irish-, and Italian-inspired dishes. As frozen drinks or draft beers chill boothside, diners can bust billiards at one of the café's pool tables or surf the café's free WiFi for instructional videos on how to correctly execute robot dance moves.

Every Tuesday and Friday night, the worn wood of the dance floor at Coyote Maverick is cleared, welcoming line dancers to strut their stuff. If dancers work up an appetite, they can snag a seat at a table and order from a menu of wings, burgers, and slow-smoked barbecue baby-back ribs. On Saturday evenings, live bands or DJs provide a country soundtrack for eaters and drinkers to tap their boots to.

You know you have a popular menu item when more than 20,000 of it gets ordered every week. At T.K.'s American Cafe, that menu item is its wings. The restaurant's specialty is offered in 52 different sauces, which range from no spice to so hot the devil himself can't stomach it. The wings pair well with the 40 beers on hand and the sports events flickering on 30 HDTVs.

Beach Boy and local resident David Marks considers Tavern on 37 his favorite restaurant in Danbury. It's not hard to see why—the eatery imports sun-ripened Italian tomatoes, and chef and owner Adam Moss crafts each pizza with housemade dough. He tops the dough with fresh ingredients such as pepperoni and olives before placing it inside a wood-fired brick oven, which renders the crust crispy, the cheese gooey, and the sun useless.