The Guardian recently broke a story on an international pistachio shortage brought on by production and consumption of Dubai chocolate bars, which have made social media consumers eager to pay a premium for the high-end confection. So yes, you may not be on TikTok, but millions are, and they are passionate consumers. The trending chocolate is filled with shredded filo or knafeh and pistachio cream. If you’ve been on social media in the past couple of years and you’ve ever liked an image of chocolate, you have surely seen countless videos of people crunching down on the thick, moreish treats.
What is knafeh? If you’ve ever had baklava that looks like it’s made with a bird’s nest type of pastry instead of flat filo sheets, then you’ve had kataifi or knafeh, the shredded filo dough used in many Middle Eastern desserts. When baked, it becomes super crunchy. It is the star ingredient in this new class of chocolate bars that has caused pistachio sales to soar.
This combination of knafeh, chocolate, and pistachio cream is a modern innovation, which seems to have emerged in the last 10–15 years, primarily in places like Dubai, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, where there's a growing market for gourmet, fusion, luxury treats. There’s no historical Middle Eastern dessert that mixes knafeh with chocolate in this way. And the combination of crunchy textures, creamy and rich pistachio, and chocolate definitely brings a wow factor. Kunafeh — when used in chocolate — typically involves fried or baked strands of kataifi pastry (that classic crunchy texture you get in knafeh desserts), sometimes they're candied or lightly sweetened with a touch of rose or orange blossom syrup. Then they are embedded or layered inside the chocolate, either as a thin crunch layer, a praline-style filling, or even as flakes throughout. When you bite into it, you get a crisp, flaky texture that contrasts with the smooth chocolate and a toasty, buttery crunch, almost like feuilletine or caramelized filo, but more rustic and aromatic. It takes skill to combine the knafeh with the other ingredients and keep it crisp and not soggy.
One of the first to create the iconic bar that led to the Dubai chocolate trend, and the first to be pushed out on TikTok, was British Egyptian entrepreneur Sarah Hamouda of Fix Dessert Chocolatier in 2021. They don’t have a website, and sales are only in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, but countless makers have created their own versions. Its virality can be traced to UAE booster Maria Vehera. The video of her trying Dubai chocolate went viral in December 2023. Quality of the bars is all over the place, but the bars from The Nuts Factory were well reviewed from a source I trust.
Some local chocolatiers making a version of the sensation are:
Compartes - LA
Mignon - Glendale and Pasadena
Marsatta - Torrance
Charles Chocolate - San Francisco