Sarah Hamouda, a British Egyptian chocolatier based in Dubai, created the bar in 2022 while pregnant. She wanted something that combined her craving for knafeh with pistachio, and the result was FIX Dessert Chocolatier's "Can't Get Knafeh Of It" bar1. Yezen Alani, co-founder of FIX, later described the international attention as "flattering and humbling" in a BBC interview1.

The bar stayed relatively niche until December 2023, when TikTok influencer Maria Vehera posted a video of herself trying it inside her car. The clip showed her biting into the paint-splattered chocolate shell as pistachio cream oozed out with satisfying ASMR crunch sounds1. That video hit over 125 million views and turned the bar into a global sensation overnight1.

Dubai chocolate disrupted the global confectionery market in ways that caught industry analysts off guard. Euromonitor International tracked the trend as it created new demand categories and opened up markets for artisan Middle Eastern-style confections worldwide1. The pistachio shortage it triggered affected not just chocolate makers but bakeries, ice cream producers, and other food manufacturers who rely on pistachio supply chains1.

The trend brought knafeh, a dessert that had been popular in the Middle East for centuries, to global mainstream awareness. As the BBC noted, "Dubai chocolate allows [food lovers] to sample this well-known dessert inside a chocolate shell," introducing the concept of a "dessert in a chocolate bar" to audiences who had never heard of knafeh1.

Major brands treated it as a serious market opportunity. Starbucks saw an organic viral moment when customers created their own Dubai Chocolate Matcha Latte customization, turning a user-generated hack into a widespread ordering trend2. Shake Shack launched official collaborations1.

By 2025, the meme dimension of Dubai chocolate made it part of a broader conversation about consumer trend cycles. The slang overload meme format used Dubai chocolate as exhibit A for how internet hype machines work: a product goes viral, gets imitated endlessly, spawns derivative products in unrelated categories, and eventually becomes a punchline for its own ubiquity3.

The story of Dubai chocolate begins with a pregnant woman's craving. In 2022, Sarah Hamouda was looking for a way to combine two of her favorite things: knafeh (a Middle Eastern pastry soaked in sugar syrup) and pistachio. Working out of her Dubai-based FIX Dessert Chocolatier brand, she filled a milk chocolate shell with pistachio cream, tahini, and shredded knafeh pastry, naming it "Can't Get Knafeh Of It"1. The bar had a distinctive paint-splattered exterior and a gooey, crunchy interior that looked as dramatic as it tasted.

For about a year, the bar was a local favorite in the UAE but unknown elsewhere. That changed in December 2023 when Maria Vehera, a TikTok influencer, filmed herself eating the bar in her car. The video was tailor-made for virality: the chocolate cracked open on camera, pistachio filling oozed out in thick ribbons, and the knafeh shards produced the kind of ASMR crunch that stops a scrolling thumb. The clip pulled in over 125 million views1.

What made the craze unusual was its supply-side bottleneck. FIX produced only about 500 bars per day, available solely through the Deliveroo app in the UAE at two specific times1. This created intense scarcity. As Monique Naval, senior research analyst at Euromonitor International, explained, the limited availability "creates a fear of missing out, further increasing interest and demand"1. The Dubai name itself added cachet. When people hear "Dubai," they think of luxury, excess, and gold-dusted everything, and that association transferred directly to the chocolate1.

Turkish food writer Aylin Öney Tan offered another explanation for the bar's grip on consumers: texture. "Chocolates with a palpable crunch, such as Swiss Toblerone and Ferrero Rocher, have always done well in the market," she noted, adding that Dubai chocolate's crunch "goes an extra mile and primes the chocolate bar for social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram"1. The visual drama of the oozing fill made every bite a content opportunity.

The imitation market exploded throughout 2024. Lindt, Ülker, and dozens of independent chocolatiers released their own versions1. Maison Samadi in London, a brand with Lebanese roots stretching back to 1872, launched "Dubai Viral Style Chocolate" and found that demand blew past projections1. The global pistachio supply took a hit as manufacturers scrambled to source enough raw material1. Supermarkets started rationing purchases, and customs agents intercepted people smuggling bars in their luggage1.

The crossover into mainstream food culture hit a new gear in early 2025. Starbucks customers began ordering a custom Dubai Chocolate Matcha Latte, and the drink went viral on its own, even though it never appeared on the official menu2. Shake Shack rolled out a limited-edition collaboration1. The bar had gone from niche Dubai confection to globally recognized food format in under two years.

But as with any inescapable trend, backlash arrived. By mid-2025, Dubai chocolate had become a punchline. Internet users started bundling it with other hyped products in satirical posts designed to mock algorithmic consumption3. The "Labubu Matcha Dubai Chocolate" slang overload meme emerged, where people listed every trendy product in a single absurd sentence3. A June 2025 TikTok riffing on the format pulled almost 178,000 likes by imagining "the limited edition Dubai Chocolate Moonbeam Ice Cream Labubu flavored Crumbl Cookie with matcha in Weck Jars"3. Urban Dictionary entries for "Dubai chocolate" shifted from descriptions of the actual product to crude jokes and dismissals, with one user calling it "another stupid trend just like labubus"4.