“It’s as overhyped and artificial as its namesake city”

Dubai Chocolate Viral Star

You’ve probably already heard the buzz surrounding Dubai-style chocolate. For many, it’s a new taste discovery.
For others, it’s just another social media illusion.

Whether you like it or not is your personal choice.

We’d like to share with you The Spectators, recent article which offers a different perspective on this chocolate.

Dubai-style chocolate, viral star of TikTok and Instagram, is so popular that Waitrose is limiting sales to two bars per customer.
The upmarket supermarket chain has taken the move, the Times reports, ‘because we want everyone to have the chance to enjoy this delicious chocolate’.
Some are sceptical. Steve Dresser, who heads up consultancy Grocery Insight, has questioned whether this is a marketing ploy, with Waitrose ‘trying to generate scarcity’.
The supermarket says no, assuring the Grocer of the ‘incredible popularity’ of these £10 confectionery bars.


It’s incredible all right. Even Waitrose’s yellow sticker fare is beyond my budget, so to me a tenner for a slab of chocolate sounds not so much indulgent as fall-of-the-Habsburgs decadent.
But my objection to Dubai-style chocolate is not the price, it’s the whole social media cult that has memed it into a must-try luxury product.
Because, no, it’s not ‘delicious’, it’s nasty, foul, vile – an exercise in gustatory garishness that warrants a place alongside beer batter, pumpkin spice, and cheese curds and gravy (come at me, Quebecers).

What Even Is Dubai-Style Chocolate?

For those uninitiated in this particular foodie trend, it consists of knafeh, an Arab dessert of syrup-soaked shredded pastry, and a paste made from pistachios, enrobed in a layer of milk chocolate. On its own each component is a tasty treat.
You can seldom go wrong with chocolate.
Even the puerile lacteous slop that contains less than 70 per cent cocoa can be satisfying in a pinch, in the same empty, fleeting way that a cherry Coke tastes refreshing when you’re thirsty.

Knafeh, the proper stuff, ideally procured from an ancient Palestinian at a backstreet stall in East Jerusalem, is irresistible.
Flaky and yet stodgy, diabetes-inducingly sweet but with a slightly acerbic nuttiness, knafeh, like good cigars and even better single malt, makes you question whether living to old age is worth it. 
Pistachios direct from the shell are little savoury emeralds but crushed with sugar or honey they become the basis for mouth-watering halva or a rich and complex ice cream.

Dubai-style chocolate, however, is an arranged marriage of incompatible flavours, a forced throupling of textures too contrasting to cohere.
It is a concoction as overhyped and artificial as its namesake city.
Like most foodie trends, and all foodie trends that originate on TikTok, Dubai-style chocolate comes with the bitter aftertaste of the astroturfed, the experience incapable of living up to the marketing puff.

Blame the Hype, Not the Chocolatier


Ironically, the blame lies not with the blender of the chocolate – British Egyptian Sarah Hamouda – but with those who have appropriated her creation.
Hamouda told CNN last year that ‘Can’t Get Knafeh of It’, just one product from her Fix chocolatier brand, is handmade in Dubai and limited to 500 orders every day, transported to customers via Deliveroo.
The company’s Instagram page lists Dubai and Abu Dhabi as the only locations where the confectionery is sold or delivered.

Geography Matters

So, unless you live in metropolitan United Arab Emirates, you’ve never tasted the real deal, or at least not tasted it under the intended circumstances, which is in the country itself.
That seems to be the source of the trouble with the many imitators: whipped up, stored or even just consumed in radically different climates to that found in the UAE, Dubai-style chocolate cannot recreate the magic of Hamouda’s over-subscribed product.
That might be why, no matter the brand, the price or the country of origin, counterfeit Dubai chocolate is invariably tainted by the same paradoxes: offensively sweet yet acridly salty, gloopy yet mealy, flavour-heavy yet quickly forgotten by the palate.

Still, it’s debatable how much of this is down to climate.
Knafeh and chocolate – particularly milk chocolate – are simply too fatty for their combination to be anything other than overpowering and slimy.
Hamouda credits the recipe to her pregnancy cravings, and while that’s a cute origin story, there’s a reason why you don’t see many pickles-and-ice-cream or apple-and-mayonnaise chocolate bars.
Pregnancy doesn’t unlock knowledge of hitherto undiscovered culinary secrets, it unlocks hormones that drive the victim’s tastebuds as crazy as the rest of her body.
Unless Fix has cornered Dubai’s severely prenatal chocoholic market, the city’s climate either renders uncongenial ingredients irresistible, in much the same way that Willy Wonka made wallpaper lickable, or the denizens of Dubai are as susceptible to social media fads as the rest of us.

The Main Ingredient Is FOMO

I’m going with fad, and for evidence look no further than the queues outside our own nation’s Lidls on Saturday, when the budget supermarket chain released its own cut-price version. Retailing at £4.99 a bar, J.D. Gross Dubai-style Chocolate sold out in just 72 minutes on Lidl’s TikTok store.
Given the costs of the ingredients required, it is hard to believe that Lidl has found a way to undercut Waitrose on price by 50 per cent without compromising on quality and flavour.
Unless, that is, they’re selling nothing more than the chance to get in on a social media craze at a more attractive price point. It doesn’t matter whether your chocolate is mostly cocoa solids or mostly sugar and milk powder when the main ingredient is viral marketing.

Final Verdict: Skip the Gimmick, Savor the Good Stuff

Regardless of whether you’re a desserts connoisseur or just a slave to your sweet tooth, tell the TikTok trend-peddlers to get stuffed – with or without pistachio cream.
If it’s chocolate you’re after, find yourself something good and dark that snaps with a reassuring crack when you break off a square.
If you’re in the mood for knafeh, your best bet is the nearest family-run Middle Eastern restaurant or market. Maybe the Emiratis can’t get knafeh of their hybrid creation but the rest of us should treat Dubai-style chocolate with the dubiety it deserves.

Source: The Spectator

Written by

Stephen Daisley

Stephen Daisley is a Spectator regular and a columnist for the Scottish Daily Mail