A week of eating around Ireland: a 7-day food itinerary

A good 7-day food itinerary for Ireland uses one base a day, moves round the country in a loop from Dublin to Galway and eats the local thing in each region: coddle in Dublin, a blaa in Waterford, market food in Cork, seafood on the Kerry and Galway coasts. Book the two or three meals that matter, leave the rest loose.

This guide plans a week of eating around Ireland, day by day, by region. It names no restaurants on purpose: places change, and a plan that depends on one table falls apart the first time it is full. It tells you what to eat, how to choose, and when to book.

What does a 7-day food itinerary for Ireland look like?

Here is the whole week on one screen. The route runs from the east coast through the south east and the south, then up the west. It touches seven counties (Dublin, Kilkenny, Waterford, Cork, Kerry, Clare and Galway), which is also enough to earn the first level of the counties badge on Mosey.

Day	Region	What to eat	Book ahead?
1	Dublin	Coddle, a full Irish breakfast, a market lunch	One dinner
2	Dublin and the coast	Seafood by the harbour, a chipper supper	No, walk in
3	Kilkenny and Waterford	A Waterford blaa, a food trail on foot	A dinner in Kilkenny
4	Cork	A covered market, local specialities, a long lunch	The long lunch
5	Kerry	Harbour seafood, ice cream, pub food	Dinner in a small town
6	Clare and the Burren	Farm produce, cheese, a coastal lunch	Lunch if you are a group
7	Galway and Connemara	Oysters and chowder, a market, a last supper	The last supper

Day 2 is deliberately light, so you can swap it for a day trip.

How do you plan a week around food in Ireland?

Plan around meals, not sights. Pick the one meal a day that you care about, protect it, and let the rest of the day fit around it. In Ireland that can be lunch, since the room is often easier to get into than at dinner.

Three rules keep the week calm.

• One base a day. Each day below is built around one town or city, with a short transfer if any. You will eat better in one place than across three.
• Eat the regional dish, not what you eat at home.
• Check transport yourself. Trains, buses and hire cars all work, but timetables change with the season, so confirm them with the operators.

Days 1 and 2: what should you eat in Dublin and on the east coast?

Day 1, Dublin. If you fly in, where to eat near Dublin Airport covers a first meal at the terminal or a short trip out. Then start with a full Irish breakfast: sausage, rashers, egg, black and white pudding and soda bread. Our guide to the full Irish breakfast explains each part, so you can read a menu before you order.

For lunch, go to a food market rather than a restaurant. A market lets you taste several things and see what is local. Our guide to Dublin food markets by day shows which market runs on which day, so check it before you pick your date.

For dinner, order coddle somewhere that does it properly. Dublin coddle is a one-pot dish of sliced pork sausages, rashers, potatoes and onion, slowly cooked in the liquid the meat gives off and traditionally eaten with bread. Dublin coddle: what to expect tells you what a good one looks like.

If you want a longer plan for the city, a day of eating in Dublin by neighbourhood walks you through it.

Day 2, the coast or a day trip. Dublin sits on the coast, and the food by the harbour is fish: a seafood chowder, or fish and chips from a chipper eaten on a harbour wall. Our guides to Irish seafood chowder and fish and chips from an Irish chipper tell you what to look for.

If you would rather leave the city, food day trips from Dublin lists the options.

Day 3: what should you eat in Kilkenny and Waterford?

The south east is the easiest day of the week to enjoy on foot. A day in Kilkenny is about walking from stop to stop. Our guide to a food lover's walk through Kilkenny gives you a route, and a self-guided food trail turns it into stops.

The food to try on this day is the Waterford blaa. A blaa is a soft, doughy white bread roll, square-ish, with white flour shaken over it before baking, and it has European protected geographical indication status, which means the name belongs to the roll made in its home area. It is mostly eaten at breakfast, often with butter or with egg and bacon, and it goes stale fast, so eat it the day it is baked. Read a weekend of eating in Waterford before you go.

Plan lunch in Waterford and dinner in Kilkenny, or the other way round. Either way, book the dinner. If you would rather spend longer in the south east and the Boyne Valley, our Ancient East food road trip shows how to plan a few days there.

Check whether a food festival is on: food festivals in Ireland, by month gives the season, and the organiser's page has this year's dates.

Day 4: what should you eat in Cork?

Cork is the day to eat from a market. The city has a covered municipal food market that is known for its fish and butchers' stalls, and it is a source of local specialities such as drisheen, spiced beef and buttered eggs. Drisheen is a type of blood pudding, so ask for a small taste first.

Our market-first plan for Cork takes you through it, and a self-guided food crawl in Cork turns the city into stops.

Make Cork your long-lunch day. After a market morning you will want to sit down, and lunch is when a good kitchen is least rushed. Book it. Dinner can be small: cheese, bread and something from the market.

Cork is where the loop turns west.

Day 5: what should you eat in Kerry?

Kerry is where the coast takes over. Dingle, the town on the peninsula of the same name, is a working fishing port. That shapes what you eat there: fish from the harbour, simple and fresh, and a lot of it. Our guide to eating your way around Dingle covers the town.

Try these:

• Fresh fish, cooked plainly. Ask what came in today. A short menu that changes is a good sign.
• Local ice cream. Eat it on the quay.
• Pub food. Eating in an Irish pub explains how ordering works, including when to order at the bar and when to wait for a server.

In a small town tables are few, so book dinner ahead, and if a place is full, join a waitlist.

Days 6 and 7: what should you eat in Clare, the Burren and Galway?

Day 6, Clare and the Burren. The Burren is a karst landscape in County Clare, and a good place to slow down. Eat from local producers where you find them: farm shops, stalls and cafés on the road. Ask what is made nearby. If you travel as a group, book a lunch so everyone sits together.

Day 7, Galway and Connemara. Galway is a good place to end. Oysters and chowder are the things to order. Native oysters are seasonal, so ask what is in season, and ask where they come from. Our guides to a food weekend in Galway and the Galway oyster and seafood festival explain the city, and the festival is a good reason to time the trip, if the season suits you.

Connemara adds a coastal lunch if you have a car. If not, stay in the city: a market in the morning, chowder at lunch, a proper dinner to finish.

Which meals should you book ahead in Ireland?

Book the meals that are hard to replace: the long lunch, the dinner in a small town, and the last night. Walk in for everything else.

Ask whether a missed table would cost you the day. A coddle in Dublin has many substitutes. A dinner in a small harbour town in summer does not.

On Mosey you can book a table at the places that take bookings, and some ask for a deposit to hold it. Our guides to how to book a restaurant table online and how deposits and cancellation policies work explain both. If a place is full for the night you want, join its waitlist, and turn on cancellation alerts: when a table is released you are told, so you can take it. Joining a waitlist for a full restaurant shows how.

Travelling with friends or family? A group booking can split the deposit so one person does not carry it. Read the help guide on splitting a deposit.

Check opening days before you plan, since smaller kitchens often close on set days. And read the guide to tipping in Ireland so the bill holds no surprise.

How do you find a good place in a town you have never been to?

Use Mosey Travel. It has hub pages for Irish cities and towns, so when you are in a town you have never heard of you can see what people have rated there, by the dish. Our guide to exploring Irish food towns with Mosey Travel shows how.

A few habits help.

1. Read the dish, not the star. A rating by the dish tells you what to order. Filter or read for the thing you came for: the chowder, the blaa, the coddle.
2. Look at the tags. Mosey tags include occasion tags such as Celebration, Group Dining and Family Friendly, and practical ones such as Outdoor seating and Late Night. They help you match a place to your day.
3. Follow people whose taste you trust. When you follow someone, their picks show on the map as Friends' picks.
4. Check allergens with the place. If you use the filter that hides dishes listing an allergen, remember that a dish with nothing listed means allergens are not listed. Ask the place.

For a wider view of what people rate highly, see the ranked lists.

How do you keep the whole trip in one list?

Start a list before you go and keep adding to it, so the week ends as one record. On the Mosey app, a list can be private, shared or public. For a trip, make one list for the week or one per region, and share it with the people travelling.

A shared list works with an invite link. Friends can add places to it, even before they have joined Mosey, so the whole group can drop their finds in as the week goes. See lists for how it works, and the help guide on making and sharing a list.

The other half is rating as you go. Rate each meal by the dish, with a photo from the table, while you still remember it. You can tag the friends you ate with, and they can add their own rating. Ratings explains the steps.

By the end of the week you have three things:

• a list of what you ate, in the order you ate it
• a food passport showing where you rated, by country and city
• progress towards the counties badge, which has levels at five, ten, sixteen and thirty-two counties

If you like to look ahead, you can also answer a Top 3 question, naming up to three places in a category in order, and your answers are kept as a private list. Travel questions ask you to vote on a town or city you have been to, and the traveller vote on a trip city does the same. Our guide to Top 3 on Mosey explains how both work.

What if you only have a weekend, or you want a different route?

Cut by region, not by meal. For a long weekend, take Dublin, then either the south east and Cork, or Galway and Clare. Do not try to squeeze in the whole loop.

For a longer trip or a coastal one, the Wild Atlantic Way food guide plans the west coast route, which runs through nine counties from Donegal in the north to Cork in the south. If you want an inland week instead, base yourself in a few market towns and do each as a day.

The route in this guide stops at the border. Northern Ireland has its own guides on the UK pages of Mosey.

A last reminder: if your trip touches a festival, a holiday weekend or a school break, book earlier than you think you need to. For a short stay, how to eat well on a short visit to Ireland is the quicker read.

More in the food guides.