How to build your own Dublin food guide with Mosey lists

The easiest way to build your own Dublin food guide is to save every place worth remembering into a few named lists on Mosey, with a short note on each saying what to order or when to go. Lists are private until you choose to share one, a shared list opens for anyone with the link, and you can invite friends to add to a list with you. Ten good places with notes beat a hundred bookmarks.

Why keep your own list at all?

Everybody has a mental list of Dublin places they mean to try, and everybody loses it. Someone mentions a place at dinner, you think you must go, and three months later you are standing on a street trying to remember the name. The list exists; it is scattered across screenshots, a note on your phone and a message from March.

A list fixes the memory problem, but the real benefit is decision speed. Tuesday evening, hungry, no plan: ten places you already trust in one list is a four-second decision instead of fifteen minutes of scrolling. It is also how you stop ending up in the same two places out of tiredness rather than choice.

Which lists should I make for Dublin?

Resist the urge to make twenty. Five that you actually use are worth more. These are the ones that earn their keep:

• Want to try. The default, and the one that gets the most use. Anything anyone recommends goes here first.
• Near work. So lunch is not a daily decision. In the city centre this list can be long; in a business park it may be three places, which is exactly why it is worth writing down.
• When people visit. The three or four places you always end up taking visitors: somewhere for a proper breakfast, somewhere for a pint and food, somewhere a little special. Having it ready saves the panic when your cousin lands at the airport.
• By neighbourhood. Dublin eats very differently across the city. A list for Stoneybatter and Smithfield, one for Portobello and Rathmines, one for the coast, means you always have an answer wherever you end up.
• By occasion. Brunch, date night, a big table for a birthday, somewhere you can eat alone at the counter.

If you like structure, Mosey's Dublin hub is a good model: it splits the city by area and by need, such as brunch, walk-ins and group dining.

Notes are the part people underuse

You can add a note to any place on a list, and this is what turns a bookmark into a guide.

The notes worth writing are the things you will not remember in four months:

• "Get the special, not the menu."
• "Go before half twelve or you will queue."
• "Sit upstairs."
• "Cash only for the bakery counter."
• "Recommended by Aoife, the lamb."

That last kind is the most valuable. Who recommended it and what they said to order is the context that makes you actually go.

How to fill a list quickly without losing quality

The trap is saving everything. A list of eighty places is as useless as no list.

1. Save from recommendations, not from adverts. A friend, a colleague who eats out constantly, a list someone you trust has shared.
2. Check the photos before you save. On Mosey, a place's page shows photographs diners took of the food at the table. If nothing on it looks like something you would order, do not save it.
3. Look at what people actually ordered. The dishes people photograph and rate tell you whether a place is right for you far faster than a description does.
4. Use rankings as a starting point. The top-rated places in Dublin are ranked by what people rated, not by who paid, which makes them a fair source of candidates rather than a final answer.

You do not have to have been somewhere to add it. Most good lists are half places you love and half places you have been meaning to get to.

Prune your list after you go

A list only stays useful if it changes. After you visit somewhere on your Want to try list, decide:

• Loved it: move it to the right occasion or neighbourhood list, and update the note with what you would order next time.
• Fine but forgettable: take it off. You will not go back, and it is cluttering the decisions.
• Disappointing: take it off, and rate it so the next person knows.

While you are there, rate the place and name the dish you had. It takes a minute, it helps the next diner, and your rating builds into a record of where you have eaten.

Can you build a food list with friends?

Yes. You can invite people to add to a list, and it is the best answer there is to "where should we eat?"

• For a group dinner: six people, one list, everybody adds two places, and the argument is over in a minute instead of a forty-message group chat.
• For a weekend away: everybody adds what they have heard about, and you arrive with a shared map.
• For a household: a running list of local places for when nobody wants to cook.

When you share a list rather than invite people to edit it, it opens for anybody with the link, with no account needed to look. That makes it a good thing to send to someone visiting Dublin for the first time.

Using other people's lists

The best recommendation has always been one person who knows what they are talking about. A shared list is that, in a form you can keep: somebody who eats out constantly in your part of the city, a friend with strong opinions about coffee, every decent lunch near a particular office.

You can save places from someone else's list into your own, which is usually what you actually want: two of their eleven, added to the pile you are already working through. Well-liked public lists can also appear on a city's page in Travel, which is a good place to find a list for a part of town you do not know.

Try it on Mosey

Start one list tonight called Want to try, add the last three places anyone recommended to you, and write one line on each about why. Read more about how lists work.