Keep a Record of Where You Have Eaten in Canada

Anyone who has moved between cities knows the problem: you leave a place and the knowledge of where to eat there stays behind. A record of where you have eaten, kept in Mosey, travels with you, with ratings by the dish, a list for each city and a permanent Top Rated list.

Why keep a record of where you have eaten?

Canadians move, and they travel. A job takes you from Winnipeg to Ottawa, a posting from Moncton to Calgary, a university term to Montreal, and each move resets your food map to zero. The corner place you loved is no longer around the corner, and the friend who knew the good bakery now lives three time zones away.

A record keeps the map alive. It holds the places, the dishes and the reasons, in a form you can hand to a friend who is visiting your old city. It also shows you something about yourself: after five years you can see which cuisines you keep returning to, and which cities gave you the meals you remember best.

How do you rate so the record builds itself?

Rate while you eat, or within the day. The form needs a place and stars, and you can add each dish, a tag and a photo. Rating by the dish is the useful part, because "four stars" tells you nothing a year later, whereas "four stars for the pierogi, two for the soup" tells you what to order. If you cannot finish, the app offers to keep the rating for later.

Ratings are one per visit. If you rated the same place recently, the app suggests updating that rating instead, so a place never appears twice for one meal. That keeps the record clean enough to trust. Everything you post can be seen by anyone looking at that place, so write it as you would tell a friend.

Should you keep a list for each city?

Yes, and it is the simplest way to stop the record getting muddled. Make a list for each place you have lived in or visited for a while: "Halifax years", "Ottawa 2024", "Winter in Montreal". Add the places you rated, then add the ones you only walked past. A cover is made from the photos of the places, so each list looks like its city.

Use sections for neighbourhoods or seasons. Write a note for each place saying what to order. When you move on, the list stays, and it becomes a gift for the next person: a friend, a colleague or a visitor. You can make it public so anyone can follow it, or private and share it by invite link. For a first list, the guide to starting a food list for your province is a good model.

What is the permanent Top Rated list?

In the lists section, two lists are always there. Top Rated holds your highest-rated places, and the app describes it as permanent and always there. My Favourites is separate and holds the places you saved. Neither can be lost, and you do not have to maintain them. As you rate across cities, Top Rated quietly collects the best of every place you have been.

That is what makes it useful when you move, whether it is across town or across the country. Open Top Rated, and your best meals from three cities are in one list. Pick three for a friend, or keep the list as a reminder of what a good meal means to you. It also protects the record against the usual failure, where you stop adding to your own lists and the best places fall out of sight.

How do tags and badges fit in?

Tags describe the visit: Date Night, Solo Dining, Family Friendly, Hidden Gem, or a cuisine. They are your words about one visit, never a claim about the place, and they help others look for what they want. They also count toward badges, which track how many different places of one kind you have rated, with levels at five, ten, twenty and fifty.

A badge is not a prize. It is a mirror of a habit, and it counts across cities, so a person who has rated five different Italian places in three provinces has the same mark as someone who rated them in one. That fits a country where people move, and it rewards the habit of paying attention rather than the place you pay it in.

Keeping the record when you move

Before you leave a city, spend ten minutes on the list. Rate any places you have not rated, add notes to the favourites, and share the list with the people who will stay. Then start the next list in the new city on day one. The shared list guide for families shows how to keep relatives in the loop.

When you arrive, the new city guide for Canada gives a month-long plan.

How a record helps local places

Every rating you leave behind is a small gift to a place you will not see again. A short note on what to order sends the next customer to the right dish. Mosey is free for a place to list, has no hidden fees and keeps its tools affordable, so the support you give stays with the place. Supporting local does not stop when you move.

See how ratings work in the app, and browse the Canadian food guides for more.

Get the Mosey app, rate the last meal you ate, and start a list for the city you are in now.