Dubai chocolate: how a pistachio bar broke the internet

It started, as these things do, with a pregnancy craving. In 2021, Sarah Hamouda began making a thick, shell-moulded chocolate bar stuffed with pistachio paste, tahini and toasted kataifi — the shredded pastry from the Middle Eastern dessert knafeh — under her brand Fix Dessert Chocolatier. She called it "Can't Get Knafeh of It." For three years, almost nobody outside Dubai knew it existed.

From craving to phenomenon

A single TikTok "mukbang" of the bar snapping open — that molten-green pistachio ooze, the audible crunch of the kataifi — did what no ad budget could. The clip pulled in over 120 million views, and the format was pure ASMR bait: satisfying, unfamiliar, and impossible to scroll past. By late 2024 the "Dubai chocolate" tag had racked up more than a billion views. The genius was scarcity: Fix sold limited daily drops through a delivery app, so the bar was both aspirational and hard to get — the exact conditions a craze needs.

The numbers behind the bar

This is where it stops being a meme and becomes an industry. Dubai Duty Free reported roughly $22 million in Dubai-chocolate sales in just the first three months of 2025, helping push it to record revenue. More than 40 major brands and retailers — from Lindt to Marks & Spencer to Galaxy — launched their own kunafa-pistachio bars to ride the wave. A global pistachio squeeze followed, with prices climbing as manufacturers scrambled for paste.

So, should you bother?

If you can find the real thing (or a good clone) at a sane price, it genuinely delivers — the texture contrast is the whole point, and it's a legitimately clever dessert. But you are now buying a supermarket knock-off of a knock-off, and the pistachio premium means you're often paying luxury money for mid execution. Peak hysteria has passed; the bar is settling into a permanent shelf-fixture rather than a must-have.