If you use the internet these days, you know how it is. There’s a new food trend going viral about every 8 minutes. The struggle is real.
It’s hard to keep up. You see all the influential influencers out there using their verbal shorthand talking about dot cakes, UK “spice bags”, or Dubai omikase baklava and you’re like “dang, I really feel like I’m missing out on something cool”.
Or maybe you don’t. Maybe you roll your eyes and assume it’s just another fluffy carb bomb with food coloring like mochi donuts turned out to be. $5.50 for a tiny flavorless day-old donut? I’m not bitter, I’m not bitter….
Regardless, if you’re like me, you want to know what the heck That New Viral Thing is one way or another. So you can either give it a try or write if off as something you’re not interested in so you can just shrug off all the hype.
This is where I come in handy, guys. I’ll save ya the clicks. Don’t bother. Next time you see a reel that blows your mind with a post about potatoes that couldn’t really possibly be as crispity-crunchity as they seem when the guy runs his knife along them, click straight over here to old Ed. Find out from your trusted Chicago chef blogger guy source if that New Viral Thing is the real-deal all-killer-no-filler goods or just a bunch of internet influencer-driven hype.
Now that we’ve committed to doing this series, we’re playing a bit of catch-up over here in the WTNVFT home office. But as devout completists, we feel compelled to document things as comprehensively as possible. For our files.
So this one is for the record. Or maybe it’s for those of you living under a rock who haven’t yet tried this or one of its many spin-offs, which include pretty much any dessert at this point.
So, yep! Get in, bitches, we’re traveling back in world wide web time a couple years to learn about Dubai Chocolate.
Dubai chocolate is an entirely original product that really took the internet by storm in 2024. You saw it. We all saw it happen in realtime.
It was one of the most viral internet food things to have taken place ever, to date, spawning myriad trend-jumping co-optations and permutations. We witnessed all manner of fast food Dubai chocolate shakes, parfaits, Dubai chocolate pancakes, etc, etc. God help us, there’s even a Dubai chocolate burger (it’s a dessert, thankfully).
Considering how viral the whole thing went so quickly, it’s interesting that the concept was only created recently. Fact - Dubai Chocolate was developed by a chef working for a high-end chocolatier in Dubai in 2021.
Wikipedia tells the story thusly:
It was created… by Nouel Catis Omamalin, a Filipino chef, and Sarah Hamouda, an Egyptian-British engineer, after she asked him to prepare a chocolate recipe similar to knafeh, which her mother used to make during her childhood. Hamouda and her husband are the co-owners of Fix Dessert Chocolatier in Dubai.
Knafeh is a traditional cheese-filled sweet encased with thin strands of the spun pastry dough known as kadayif, and garnished with pistachio. The Dubai chef was enlisted to create a chocolatey treat that would capture the crunchy-yet-soaked-with-flavor aspect of the Egyptian holiday favorite and emulate the dramatic inner “reveal” of contrasts displayed when the dessert is served or broken open.
The original Dubai chocolate bar was called Can’t Get Knafeh. It was made by hand, and only 25 were produced per day. The company didn’t sell too many until after 2023, when they scaled up the recipe and production and employed a new marketing strategy that embraced and encouraged social media virality.
In late 2023, Fix was selling one £16 ($19.72) CGK bar per week, but after beginning to employ TikTok influencers to promote it and changing the name in 2024, that shit went viral. Which, duh. We’re all aware. That’s why it’s episode 2 of this new non-viral series about viral food trends called What’s That New Viral Food Thing.
Ok, Ed, yes. Good fuckin’ intro. Yadda yadda, bro. So what the heck is it, already?
Yes, good question, clueless reader, non-haver of Instagram or TikTok…person who even somehow avoided looking closely at the photo of Fix’s Dubai Chocolate Bar above. I’m happy to oblige. Get to it, I shall.
The Dubai Chocolate Bar consists of three main components:
Pistachio cream (or créme) which is just pistachios ground into a smooth paste with sweetener, oil, and/or white chocolate. It’s not dissimilar to Nutella.
The aforementioned and aforepictured kadayif, which are crunchy little strands of toasted filo dough.
And chocolate. Usually milk chocolate is used, and often the chocolate has some green and yellow color elements added to make the bars look exotic and expensive.
That’s it. Pretty simple, really. It eats like a fancy Reese’s cup, essentially, but with vibrant green pistachio in place of peanut butter. It’s a little sweeter, but also greenly vegetal with some added crunch and lightness from incorporating the toasty kadayif dough strands into the pistachio mix.
Have you tried Dubai Chocolate? What did you think of it?
Honestly? For me, it’s hard to go wrong on this one. I love the flavor of pistachios and it’s long overdue to have its moment in the trendy sun. Influencers are now figuring out lots of new creative ways to work pistachio butter/creme into all sorts of dishes. It’s seen as a luxury ingredient and the pale green color adds to the appeal. The buttery crunch of the toasty filo strands provides a great textural contrast to pretty much anything.
Wrapping up, I give the Dubai chocolate bar as well as this entire concept of combining pistachio with chocolate and crunchy toasties a full two thumbs up. I’ve hardly seen a rendition or version of this that hasn’t looked delicious.
But I also agree with this guy below who states it pretty clearly - it’s pistachio and chocolate with some crunchy strands, so why’s everybody charging like four times what it should actually cost?
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