What happens when you combine excellent flavors, satisfying textures, stunning visuals, social media influencers, and a luxury brand name? You get a perfect viral food storm, like the one that catapulted Dubai chocolate into our collective must-try list. In this article, we share how a chocolate bar shook up the luxury dessert space while altering the global pistachio market in the process.
What Is Dubai Chocolate?
Today, “Dubai chocolate” has evolved into its own flavor category, broadly referring to any chocolate product featuring the signature combination of pistachio cream, kataifi, and chocolate, regardless of where it’s made.
The original bar, however, was created in 2021 at Dubai’s FIX Dessert Chocolatier when pregnant founder Sarah Hamouda was craving a mashup of knafeh and pistachio. She drew inspiration from classic Middle Eastern desserts and built around a simple formula: chocolate, pistachio, and crunch.
The construction, key to its appeal, starts with a Belgian chocolate shell. Encased is a bright green filling made from pistachio cream and a touch of tahini. Mixed throughout is toasted kataifi, which is a shredded phyllo pastry commonly used in desserts like knafeh. Crack open a bar, and you get that textural payoff that translates beautifully on video (and video is exactly how this thing traveled).
The Chocolate Bar That Broke the Internet
In December 2023, a food and lifestyle influencer posted an ASMR clip on TikTok of the bar breaking open, revealing its vibrant, textured interior and audible crunch. The TikTok clip pulled in more than 100 million views and set off a global chain reaction. The TikTok algorithm doesn’t care about borders, so instead of spreading first to neighboring Gulf countries, the trend spiked almost simultaneously in New York, London, Seoul, and Bangkok, where people could watch the bar but couldn’t buy it.
At this time, Fix Dessert Chocolatier only sold the product in Dubai, in small handmade batches and through two daily online ordering windows that sold out in minutes. Travelers and flight crews purchased their duty-free limit and stored bars in their carry-on luggage. Meanwhile, the internet marketed the product for free.
The Squeeze on Global Commodities
Home chefs without access to the real thing started making their own versions, which is what actually broke the supply chain. Millions of enthusiasts started buying up pistachio paste all at once. Copycat recipes exploded online. Then, bakeries started producing their own versions. Before long, major manufacturers and retailers launched products inspired by the original. By late 2024, Dubai chocolate variations had appeared in supermarkets, cafés, bakeries, and specialty dessert shops across Europe, North America, and Asia.
The sudden demand for high-volume pistachio paste caught distributors off guard, shifting the ingredient from a luxury sweet to a competitive industrial baking commodity.
Should Dubai Chocolate Have Place on Your Menu?
It depends. The biggest caution is cost. By 2024, pistachio prices had increased by 35%. Both cacao and pistachios are vulnerable to the effects of climate change, so prices are unlikely to drop anytime soon. However, operators could see major success by adding it as a limited-time offer (LTO). It’s photogenic, ingredients like kataifi are now stocked by mainstream distributors thanks to the bar’s popularity, and it pulls interest across age groups. This trend also has staying power. Dubai chocolate could be the new pumpkin spice.
A benefit of jumping on the Dubai chocolate train is its flexibility. Restaurants can borrow the flavor profile as an accent on something that’s already theirs. For instance, Shake Shack just brought back their wildly popular Dubai Chocolate Pistachio Shake that quickly sold out last year, while IHOP is bringing back their popular Dubai Chocolate Pancakes.
Either way, this one’s worth watching closely. Few desserts have managed to disrupt a global commodity market on the strength of a TikTok video, and that alone says something about where food trends are headed next.
