Eat your way round all 32 counties of Ireland: a food bucket list

To eat in every county of Ireland, rate one place you have eaten in each of the 32 counties on the island, six of them in Northern Ireland. The Irish counties badge on Mosey does the counting: it reaches Wanderer at 5 counties, Wayfarer at 10, Voyager at 16 and Globetrotter at 32, so a counties of Ireland bucket list has milestones all the way along.

This guide explains exactly what counts, how to choose your first counties, how to plan one a month and what happens when your trip crosses the border.

What is the Irish counties badge on Mosey?

It is a badge for the spread of places you have rated, not for how many you have rated. Eat and rate in five different counties and you reach the first level. Keep going and the badge climbs through four levels, named Wanderer, Wayfarer, Voyager and Globetrotter, the same names Mosey uses for its other travel badges.

The target is the 32 traditional counties of Ireland: 26 in the Republic and six in Northern Ireland. People use the word "county" in a few ways, and Mosey uses the plain one. Dublin is one county here, however many council areas it has, and the list does not count provinces, cities or towns.

You do not set the badge up or switch it on. It works from the ratings you already leave, so a bucket list is really a habit: rate where you eat and the map fills in behind you. The badge is shown in the Mosey app to people using it in Ireland, and anyone who has earned it keeps it.

What counts as rating a county?

One rating of one place, in that county. The rules are short:

• A rating counts. You rate a place you have eaten at, ideally by the dish, and Mosey files the place under its county. That is all a county needs.
• Each county counts once. Twenty ratings in Cork are still one county. The badge measures how widely you have eaten, so the second place in a county does not move it.
• A hidden rating does not count. If you hide or remove a rating, that county stops counting from it, unless another rating of yours sits in the same county.
• A level, once reached, is kept. If a count falls later, the level you reached stays.
• A place must be filed under a county. Mosey counts the county each place is filed under. If a rating seems not to count, the place may not be filed under its county yet.

Notice what is missing. You do not need a photograph, a long review or a tag, and you do not need to be a regular. A single honest rating of a single meal is enough, which makes the badge a good reason to rate the quick lunch on a long drive as well as the big dinner.

How many counties do you need for each level?

The four levels sit at 5, 10, 16 and 32 counties:

Level	Counties rated
Wanderer	5
Wayfarer	10
Voyager	16
Globetrotter	32

Five is within reach of anyone who travels a little, and most people who live in Ireland already have a few counties behind them from family weekends and holidays. Sixteen is half the island, a real milestone. Thirty-two is every county, the full list, and there is no shortcut to it: someone has to eat in Leitrim and Longford.

Because a level is kept once you reach it, there is no pressure to stay current. You can reach Voyager over several years and the badge will wait.

Where should you start?

Start with the counties you have already eaten in, because they may be worth more than you think. If you can name five counties where you have sat down to a meal in the last few years, rating one place in each is the quickest route to Wanderer. You can only rate a place you remember well enough to say something true about, so begin with the recent ones and work backwards.

Then think in provinces. The island has four, and they divide the 32 counties neatly: Leinster has 12 counties, Munster six, Connacht five and Ulster nine, three of them in the Republic and six in Northern Ireland. A province is a handy way to plan, because the counties inside one tend to sit beside each other.

• Leinster holds Dublin and its neighbours, so it is the easy first step for many people. The food day trips from Dublin show how far one city can take you before you need a hotel.
• Munster gives you six counties from the south coast to the Shannon, with Cork, Kerry and Limerick among them.
• Connacht is the west: Galway, Mayo, Sligo, Roscommon and Leitrim.
• Ulster is the long way round, and the northern counties are the ones many people leave until last.

Which counties make an easy weekend?

The trick is to stop thinking of a weekend as one county. Counties are small enough that a weekend in one town often touches the next, and every county line you cross while eating is another tick towards the badge.

Look for a base on or near a county boundary and plan one meal on each side. A few pairings that work as a weekend shape, going only by which counties border each other:

• Dublin and the counties around it. Meath, Kildare and Wicklow all touch Dublin's edge, so one city weekend can become two or three counties if you plan a lunch out of town.
• Kilkenny, Carlow and Laois. Three neighbouring counties in the south east, handy for a long weekend with the one stay.
• Cork and Kerry. Two big Munster counties that meet, and each rewards more than one meal.
• Galway, Clare and Mayo. Galway borders both of the others, so a Galway base reaches Clare to the south and Mayo to the north.
• Wexford and Wicklow. Two coastal counties that meet on the east side, for a seaside weekend.

If you want a ready-made plan for one stretch, the Wild Atlantic Way food guide runs down the west coast and crosses a good many counties in the process, and eating your way around Dingle covers one town in Kerry in detail. Book ahead on busy weekends where a place takes bookings, so a county does not slip because the table was gone.

How do you plan a county a month?

A county a month is slow on purpose. It turns the badge into a habit rather than a project, and the arithmetic is easy to hold in your head: ten months of it gets you to Wayfarer and sixteen to Voyager, with no rush at all.

A plan that works for most households:

1. List the counties you have already rated. Count them first. You may start with four or five already in hand.
2. Pick a county a month, and choose it by what is happening there rather than by a map. A food trail, a market or a festival in a given season is a good reason to go. Festival dates change, so always check the organiser's page for this year's dates.
3. Match each month to the weather. Coastal counties in the long days, cities and inland towns in the cold months.
4. Rate on the day, while the dish is fresh. A rating written that evening is more use to the next person than one written a month later from memory.
5. Double up when you can. If a county sits beside one you are planning anyway, add a lunch there.

For a bigger trip, the week of eating around Ireland is a ready-made route that can add several counties at once. A week like that can be your holiday month: four or five counties in one go, then a quiet month at home.

If you want company, ask a friend to do it with you. Make a list of the counties you plan to eat in and send the invite link, and your friend can add places to it even before they have joined Mosey. Our guide to making and sharing a list of places shows how, and the lists feature page explains the options for keeping a list private or sharing it.

How do you eat well in a county you know nothing about?

Most of the counties you still need are ones you have never planned a meal in. That is the point of the badge, and a few habits help.

Ask for the local thing. Whatever the county, the useful question is what the kitchen is proud of that day. A seafood dish on a harbour, a farmhouse cheese in a dairy county, a market stall in a town on market day. You do not need a list of famous dishes to know what to order: ask, then rate the dish you were given.

Use the Mosey Travel hubs for the towns in a county. A hub gathers what people have rated in a town, so you can see a place's picture before you arrive. The guide to Mosey Travel explains how the hubs work. After a trip, the traveller vote lets you say what you thought of the town you went to as a food city, which helps the next person choose.

Walk a town if it has a food walk. A food walk puts a neighbourhood's well-rated places in walking order, so one outing can leave you with a handful of ratings. Our guide to how food walks work on Mosey explains how they are chosen.

Follow a food trail. A trail takes you from stop to stop and gives you a reason to get out of the car. Our guide to how food trails work for diners explains how the stops and stamps work.

Think about the whole table. If you are eating with others, tag the friends you ate with and they can add their own rating of the same place. One meal can move several people's counties at once, which is a good argument for car shares and group trips.

If somebody in your group needs to avoid certain ingredients, use the dish filter that hides dishes listing an allergen, and remember that a dish with nothing listed means the allergens are not listed, so ask the place directly.

What happens when you cross into Northern Ireland?

It counts. The badge is for the island of Ireland, so the six Northern Ireland counties, Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone, are part of the 32 and count exactly as the Republic's do. Rate a place in County Down and you have a county, the same as for County Kerry.

The six counties are in the United Kingdom, so Mosey keeps its Northern Ireland pages on its UK site. This guide stays on the Irish side of the border: cross it and your ratings still count towards the 32, and the UK site is where to read about eating there.

Two practical points:

• Donegal is the county that reaches furthest north, and it mostly borders Northern Ireland. A Donegal trip is an easy way to see how close the border is and is worth thinking about as a pair with a trip across it.
• Londonderry is the county's formal name, and many people say Derry. The badge uses County Londonderry, and it is one county whichever name you use.

Opening hours, booking and what is on a menu can differ across the border, so check before you go rather than assuming a place works as it does at home.

How do you keep track of the counties you have done?

Three places in the app keep the record for you, and you can add a fourth of your own.

• Your badges show the Irish counties badge, its level and what is left before the next one.
• Your food passport stamps the countries, towns and neighbourhoods where you rate, and shows the counties and regions still to explore. A place that sits in a county but not in a named town is stamped as that region, so rural places are not left out. See the food passport page for how stamps work.
• Your ratings hold the dishes themselves, so you can look back at what you ate in each county.
• A list of your own, such as one called "Counties still to do", is a simple way to keep the next five you plan to visit in one place.

If you want to see how the badge fits with Mosey's others, our guide to badges, streaks and your food year covers the rest of the ladder, and how to write a rating that helps the next diner explains what makes a rating useful.

One last tip: do not chase the badge at the cost of the meal. A county is a good excuse to go somewhere, but the rating is only worth something to the next reader if you rate honestly, including the meals that were fine and nothing more.

When you plan the next county, the ranked lists and the rest of the guides are good places to start.