How to increase your Best Taste ranking in Dave the Diver

Dave the Diver Best Taste - Dave is underwater, next to a net containing a captured pufferfish
(Image credit: Mintrocket)

Achieving a higher Best Taste ranking in Dave the Diver is vital if you want your sushi bar to reach new heights of success. Your restaurant's reputation is what draws more customers in and the Cooksta app, which you gain access to fairly early on, will help you spread the word. You'll also rank up once you meet specific criteria, and one of those is the Best Taste ranking.

While the game generally does a pretty good job of explaining things, it does leave you high and dry when it comes to some of the more obscure aspects of the game. With that in mind, here's how to increase your Dave the Diver Best Taste ranking on Cooksta.

Dave the Diver Best Taste: How to increase the ranking 

Best Taste shows up on the Cooksta app under "rank up" and, once you get to the Silver milestone, it's one of the things you'll need to increase to progress to a Gold ranking. 

Once you know how to increase the Best Taste stat, it's relatively simple. To get started, have a look at all the recipes you have available at the restaurant. You should notice that each one has a Best Taste stat—it's the second one down, next to the smiley face. Check the screenshot above if you're unsure. 

The recipes you start out with will all be pretty low but the rarer the recipe, and by extension, the ingredients needed to make it, the higher the Best Taste stat. For the Gold rank on Cooksta, shown in the screenshot above, you'll need at least one of your recipes to have a Best Taste rank of 125 or higher. Sadly no recipe's going to net you that stat right off the bat, so your best bet is to enhance the recipe with the highest base stat, assuming you're able to get the ingredients easily. 

Researching recipes often yields results with higher Best Taste stats too, so it's worth taking the time to do challenges to unlock the research points needed. It's also worth getting into the habit of checking chests and harvesting anything you come across when you're diving. Fish is good, clearly, but you need the less obvious ingredients, such as kelp, to enhance dishes and increase their Best Taste rating.

Finally, if you're having trouble catching a specific type of fish, experiment with different weapon types. The Net Gun, which you can pick up early, is great for catching smaller schools of fish without damaging the meat, but bigger fish take a bit more damage before you can harvest them.

Sarah James
Senior Guides Writer

Sarah started as a freelance writer in 2018, writing for PCGamesN, TechRadar, GamingBible, Red Bull Gaming and more. In 2021, she was offered a full-time position on the PC Gamer team where she takes every possible opportunity to talk about World of Warcraft and Elden Ring. When not writing guides, most of her spare time is spent in Azeroth—though she's quite partial to JRPGs too. One of her fondest hopes is to one day play through the ending of Final Fantasy X without breaking down into a sobbing heap. She probably has more wolves in Valheim than you.

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