ИСТИНА

Food tourism is a unique segment of tourism that contributes to the development of tourist destinations. Recent researches show that local food experience can positively affect trip satisfaction, revisit intention, and destination’s attractiveness. However, there is still a lack of research focusing on the relationship between experience of regional theme restaurants and destination’s place identity. Our study aims to examine the relationships among tourist experience, emotions, and behavioral intentions based on a case of the local-specific theme restaurant Zaboi (“Coalface”) located in Kemerovo, Russia’s largest coal-mining region. Research design is based on a combination of a content analysis of online reviews and a visitors’ survey followed by regression analysis. We focus on various aspects of visitor emotions, behavioral intentions, and relationships between visitor experiences and place identity. In line with previous studies, our results confirm a significant positive relationship between emotions and revisit intention. In addition, our results provide new evidence on the role of place identity in shaping visitors’ emotions. The authentic coal-mining theme provokes a positive emotional response for both tourists and local residents. This response, in turn, is positively associated with intentions to revisit and to recommend.