Where Did the Dubai Chocolate Bar Come From — and Can You Buy It?

There’s a crunchy, gooey, nutty treat that has taken over social media feeds this year, and it’s a very specific chocolate bar. Colloquially known as the “Dubai chocolate bar,” this milk chocolate candy is stuffed with crispy knafeh — finely shredded phyllo dough — and a creamy pistachio spread. With its contrasting textures and soft interior, the bar can easily create ASMR-style sounds as you break it in half and yield decadent drips of filling, priming it for TikTok and Instagram. 

Sure enough, home cooks have been posting videos of themselves making the Dubai chocolate all year. The hashtag #dubaichocolate has been used 45,500 times on Instagram, and when you scroll through its feed, you’ll see nothing but green and brown chocolate-pistachio combos. The prevalence of this one dessert prompted me to wonder — where did it originate, and why is it a “Dubai” chocolate bar? So I went on a journey into the depths of the internet to find out.

The now-renowned confection first went viral in December 2023, when Dubai-based food influencer Maria Vehera posted a video of herself reviewing the chocolate bar — to date, her TikTok has racked up 80.7 million views. Vehera purchased the chocolate bar from Fix Dessert Chocolatier, a local producer in Dubai that serves bars with creative and often textured fillings, like the brand’s “Cereously Chewy,” which includes chewy fudge brownies with cereal encased in milk chocolate and, of course, the “Can’t Get Knafeh of It” that the internet now knows as the “Dubai chocolate bar.”

Fix was founded by 38-year-old entrepreneur Sarah Hamouda, who started the brand as a side hustle in 2021 after being inspired by her pregnancy cravings, according to CNN. One of the most important (and most tragic) things to know about Fix’s pistachio and knafeh candy is that it is only available via delivery in Dubai. 

The chocolate bar becaeme famous so quickly that scammers and counterfeit candy-makers quickly jumped on the opportunity to try and profit off of it. While researching the bar produced by Fix, I came across a website that appeared to belong to the chocolatier. Wanting to check if the bars could be shipped to the United States, I added some to my cart — the site informed me that I needed to purchase at least 10 of them in order to check out — and entered my shipping information. When I was presented only with payment options like Apple gift cards and ATM deposits, I became suspicious and immediately exited the page. Needless to say, I will note be linking to that website here.

It was then that I went directly to Fix’s Instagram page, where I came across a very clear statement outlining that the small company does not have a website, physical store, or any authorized resellers and that its products are, emphatically, only for sale via Deliveroo in Dubai. 

Fix’s notice that there are no authorized resellers of the chocolate bars is equally noteworthy. Amazon is full of dupes of the treat, many of which have bad reviews, and online retailers like Nuts Factory are peddling something similar — rather murkily calling it “Dubai Chocolate” without referencing Fix — but it is not the same as the original. And as the brand notes, distributors who did manage to get their hands on the real candy are “not storing the Fix dessert bars in the right conditions and are selling them at [three times] the price.” 

If you don’t live in Dubai and you want to try its most famous confection, then your best bet might be to just make it at home. There are plenty of influencers who give clear instructions on how to recreate the chocolate bar, but I’d recommend finding one that incorporates tahini in their recipe, an ingredient in the Fix original that many content creators seem to leave out.