Cork's best-rated restaurants: how to use them on a visit

The quickest way to find Cork's best-rated places on a visit is to open the Cork page on Mosey, which shows what people have actually rated in the city, then shortlist a few by the meal you need and check the photographs of the food before you book. A high rating matters most when it comes from many people, carries photographs from separate visits, or comes with Gold, a mark earned from ratings that nobody can buy.

This guide is for the visitor: somebody with two or three days in Cork, no local knowledge, and a strong wish not to waste a meal.

What does "best-rated" actually mean?

On Mosey a rating comes from somebody who ate at a place, usually with a photograph of what they had. That makes it a different kind of evidence from a star average collected over years.

Three things decide how much a high rating is worth:

• How many people left it. The count on a card is people, not visits, so one enthusiast rating ten times does not look like ten customers. A perfect score from two people is promising. From forty it is a pattern.
• What the photographs show. A dozen plates from a dozen visits tells you more about a kitchen than any description, in about four seconds.
• Whether it is Gold. Gold appears in place of the score for places whose average is high enough, and it stays until the average falls some way further, so it reflects consistency rather than one good month. Ratings left by a place's own owners do not count towards it.

Ranked lists on Mosey order places by what people rated, not by who paid. Advertising, subscriptions and payments do not move a place up a page. That makes a ranking a fair starting point in a city you do not know, and only a starting point: a place that opened recently with a few ratings has not had time to rank, and may be excellent.

Why a town page beats a search when you are new

Searching works when you can name what you want. Arriving in Cork, you probably cannot. The useful question is "what is this city good at", and a town page answers it: what is rated, what people photographed, and which dishes come up again and again.

Often the answer is not what you expected. A city with a few famous names usually has several equally good places nobody mentioned to you, and the photographs are how you find them. The Travel feature explains how city and town pages work.

Plan the first night before you arrive

Everybody eats badly on their first night somewhere new. You arrive late and tired and go to whatever is nearest and lit. The fix: decide on the train or the night before.

1. Pick the area you will be in. Cork's centre sits on an island between two channels of the River Lee and is easy to walk, so anywhere central is a short stroll.
2. Shortlist three places with good photographs and a reasonable number of ratings.
3. Book one, where it takes bookings on Mosey. It is free, and you get a reminder.
4. Save the other two to a list as back-ups.

If the place you want is full, join the waitlist. When somebody cancels, the table goes to the list instead of sitting empty.

Plan by meal, not just by dinner

A short visit has more meals than dinners, and Cork rewards the ones in between:

• The morning: the English Market, a covered market in the city centre, is the best introduction to what the city eats. Check its opening days before you plan around it.
• Coffee and lunch: look for places with many recent ratings and photographs of the food you would actually order.
• A proper dinner: book, especially on a Friday or Saturday.
• After the pub: fewer places are open late, so the guide to late-night food in Cork is worth reading before you need it.

Search for the dish

When somebody rates a place on Mosey and names what they had, that dish gets its own page at that place, with photographs from the people who ordered it and what they paid where they said. For a visitor, that is the most direct route to a good meal: search for the thing you want to eat, rather than for a type of place, and you see who is doing it well.

It also helps at the table. Every kitchen has something it is proud of and something it makes because people expect it, and the photographs usually tell you which is which.

Seeing more than one place in an afternoon

If you have an afternoon free, a walk between several small stops shows you far more of Cork than one long lunch. Where a food trail is running, one ticket covers several places, with something at each and a stamp as you go. The self-guided food trail guide for Cork covers how to do it, and how to build your own route from a list if no trail is on.

Keep a record of where you ate

Save everything to one list for the trip, with a note on each place ("get the special", "sit upstairs", "book ahead"). While you are there it is a map. Afterwards it is the best record of what you ate, which otherwise vanishes within weeks, and the most useful thing to hand to a friend going next.

Then rate the places you ate, with a photograph. Your ratings build up on your profile into a record of where you have actually been, and they help the next visitor choose.

Try it on Mosey: open the Cork page before you travel, book your first night, and save two back-ups to a list.