What Is Dubai Chocolate?
Dubai chocolate is a thick milk or dark chocolate bar filled with a mixture of pistachio cream and toasted, shredded kataifi pastry (a thin phyllo-like noodle), giving it a creamy, nutty filling with a crunchy, shredded-wheat-like texture.
More detail
The bar was created by Fix Dessert Chocolatier, a small chocolate shop in Dubai, and built around a filling inspired by knafeh, the Middle Eastern dessert made with kataifi pastry, cheese, and syrup. Instead of cheese, the bar swaps in pistachio cream (sometimes cut with tahini) folded through kataifi that's been shredded fine and toasted in butter until deeply golden and crisp. That mixture gets set into a thick shell of tempered chocolate, so every bite has a snap of chocolate, a smooth pistachio layer, and a crackly, almost cereal-like crunch running through the center. The bar went viral in late 2023 after a food influencer's video of it being cut open and pulled apart racked up hundreds of millions of views, and demand quickly outpaced what the original shop could produce, leading to resellers, long lines, and a wave of copycat versions from chocolate makers worldwide.
Where it's used
Dubai chocolate is eaten on its own as a candy bar, but the pistachio-kataifi filling has since been adapted into cookies, cakes, ice cream, cheesecake, and spreadable jars sold as "Dubai chocolate spread."
Substitutes
If kataifi pastry isn't available, shredded phyllo dough or crushed shredded wheat cereal toasted in butter gives a similar crunch, and pistachio butter mixed with a little tahini can stand in for the pistachio cream filling.
FAQ
Where can you buy real Dubai chocolate?
The original bar, made by Fix Dessert Chocolatier, is sold mainly in the UAE and through limited international shipments, so most bars available elsewhere are copycat versions made by other chocolatiers using the same pistachio-kataifi concept.
Why is Dubai chocolate so expensive?
Pistachio cream and kataifi pastry aren't cheap, and demand spiked so far past supply after the bar went viral that resellers began marking up prices well above what the ingredients and labor would normally justify.
What does Dubai chocolate taste like?
It tastes like a combination of milk chocolate, sweetened pistachio paste, and toasted, buttery pastry, landing somewhere between a candy bar and a slice of knafeh.
Can you make Dubai chocolate at home?
Yes. It requires tempering chocolate for the shell, toasting shredded kataifi in butter until golden, folding it into pistachio cream, and setting the filling inside the chocolate before it firms up in the fridge.
Is Dubai chocolate the same as knafeh?
No, but it borrows from it. Knafeh is a warm, syrup-soaked dessert made with kataifi and cheese, while Dubai chocolate takes that same shredded, crispy pastry idea and reworks it as a cold, chocolate-covered bar filling.
