<jats:sec> <jats:title>Purpose</jats:title> <jats:p>The study aims at examining factors influencing dining intentions at ethnic food restaurants in the mainstream coastal tourism destinations with the investigation of the intervening impacts of emotional involvement and dining ambience.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title>Design/methodology/approach</jats:title> <jats:p>Through review of literature and collection of 411 useable responses from five selected coastal tourism destinations, the study has been in Bangladesh. To collect data, a questionnaire is prepared by generating new measurement items through focus group discussions (FGDs) and subsequent exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and adapting existing validated measurement items into the context. Subsequently, partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) is performed by employing Smart PLS 3.3.3 for evaluating the hypothesized relationships among the variables.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title>Findings</jats:title> <jats:p>The study results show that food novelty, food quality and hygienic food processing have direct significant effects on dining intentions at ethnic food restaurants. Moreover, results of this study reveal that both emotional involvement and dining ambience partially mediate the relationship between food novelty, food quality and hygienic food processing and dining intentions at ethnic food restaurants in the mainstream coastal tourism destinations in Bangladesh.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title>Practical implications</jats:title> <jats:p>A key managerial insight that emerged from this study is that ethnic food restaurants and the tourism industry can attract more customers by enhancing food novelty, food quality and hygienic food processing in the mainstream coastal tourism destinations, and moreover, ethnic food restaurants can improve restaurants' ambience and customers' emotional attachments by including ethnic features in the restaurants.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title>Originality/value</jats:title> <jats:p>This study has generated new knowledge by developing a new research model through integrating food novelty, food quality, hygienic food processing, emotional involvement and dining ambience for predicting dining intentions at ethnic food restaurants in the mainstream coastal tourism destinations. Moreover, this study has offered several unique policy implications (i.e. adding different novel authentic ethnic dishes to restaurant menus, maintaining the international standards of food quality and adding aromas, decor and different dining formats, i.e. formal, casual, floor and counter/bar dining, into the ethnic food restaurants) for ethnic food restaurants to retain existing customers and attract new customers.</jats:p> </jats:sec>