The internet has gone bananas for Dubai chocolate. Social media influencers such as Ophelia Nichols say they gobble it up.
"It smells beautiful, and it is beautiful!" Nichols exclaimed in a recent TikTok video. "How do they make it like that?"
Dubai chocolate bars are kind of like KitKats, but stuffed with pistachio nuts and aromatic pistachio nougat. When the trend first took off over the summer, most foodies had to order the confections from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. They posted videos of themselves rapturously unboxing and sampling the bars. (Parody videos inevitably followed.) Curious consumers drove, sometimes for hours, to Arabic specialty food stores, or they stood in line at places like the Nuts Factory in New York City, which limited customers to one bar per person after the company started making its own version of the treat.
What started as a fad now seems to be sticking around. Baskin-Robbins has started selling Dubai chocolate ice cream bars in many of its franchises. You can get Dubai chocolate waffles in Milwaukee, Dubai chocolate cupcakes in Houston, Dubai chocolate pound cake in Paterson, N.J., Dubai chocolate milkshakes in Chicago and Dubai chocolate croissants in San Francisco.
Even a 120-year-old Polish bakery in Hamtramck, Mich., known for traditional doughnuts called paczki, jumped onto the trend. The New Palace Bakery sells paczki in dozens of flavors, including Dubai chocolate.
"The youngsters, they come up with ideas all the time," said Vicky Ognanovich, a long-time employee whose father owned the bakery. The Dubai chocolate paczki was a sensation over the summer, she said, and is now mainly available as a special order. But handmade Dubai chocolate bars remain top sellers elsewhere, including at a gourmet ice cream store called Booza Delight in Dearborn, Mich.
"We were just slammed with customers," said owner Yasser Hashwi, remembering the peak of the viral craze, when his small store sold hundreds of chocolate bars a day. "We had, like, a whole shift making Dubai chocolates."
"Twelve hours a day, for about 35 days straight," added Hashwi's daughter-in-law Deyala, who is also his business partner. She attributed the popularity to their kitchen's attention to detail; for example, their phyllo dough, which gives the bar a signature crunch.
"It's hand toasted in-house," she said. "We blend that in with the pistachio cream and then we blend with pistachio chunks to give a little more texture inside. Then it's a mixture of dark chocolate and milk chocolate in the inside, drizzled with that same chocolate, and then sprinkled with pistachio on top as well."
Now that variations of Dubai chocolate are ensconced in so many menus, Deyala Hashwi said, she believes the dessert has joined the American palette.
Beth Novey produced the digital version of this story. Jennifer Vanasco edited the broadcast and digital versions. Chloee Weiner mixed the audio version.
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