Readers' Choice: St. Patrick's Day in New Canaan

Saturday marks St. Patrick’s Day 2012, and many of us will celebrate by heading to parades this weekend, catching up with friends, and dancing and celebrating with our neighbors through church-organized and other community events.

In New Canaaan, a traditional with plenty of entertainment—organized and sponsored by town businesses and organizations to benefit The Outback teen center—will be held 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday at Hall.

St. Patrick's Day could lend itself to a number of different categories in a Readers' Choice series: Favorite Irish movies ("The Quiet Man"? "In the Name of the Father"? "The Field"?), Irish band (Dubliners? Chieftains? U2?) or Irish fare (Corned beef and cabbage? Shepherd's pie?)

We've got to settle on one, and since those of us planning to head out likely have our “go-to” spots, we’re asking for your recommendations for this week’s New Canaan Patch Readers’ Choice: If you're headed out to a local watering hole, where are you planning to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day?

Most importantly: What makes your go-to spot special? Why do you enjoy it?

As with each Readers’ Choice contest, Patch will factor in a combination of poll votes, comments and most importantly, ratings and reviews in the Patch Places directory, in determining winners.

Below you’ll find a starter list that we’re asking you to help us to flesh out—as well as a poll whose choices we’ll update as we get feedback from you. 

Please which places are missing from the list and why they're the best—we'll add them to the poll and create a new Patch Places listing for them. If you own or operate an establishment of any kind that doesn't appear as a Patch Places listing on New Canaan Patch, email me at michaeld@patch.com. If you do see your business listed and want to , by all means go for it and let me know if you have any questions (also consider !)

Before we get to our list and poll, just a note that here in Fairfield County we have five large parades—in Bridgeport, Danbury, Greenwich, Milford and Stamford—and here are some details about the upcoming ones:

• Bridgeport: 12 p.m. Friday, parade starts on Broad Street
• Greenwich: 2 p.m. Sunday, March 25 starts at
• Danbury: 2 p.m. Sunday, starts at

Starter list for New Canaan Readers’ Choice: Places to Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day (tell us what we’re missing):

• Gates Restaurant