If you’ve looked around and checked some menus, you’d see that “Dubai chocolate” is all the rage. I saw Lindt selling it while leaving the grocery store, the bougie donut shop has a seasonal Dubai chocolate donut, and a cart opened up selling it locally too.
How has pistachio + chocolate been able to inspire such a marketing blitz? Why do 3 real estate conglomerates in a trench coat pretending to be a country need to invent a new dessert? Lastly, since Dubai is close to Iran, where I assume they source their pistachios, shouldn’t all this pistachio stuff be red?
I’ve wanted to try this but every time I see “Dubai” I think of human trafficking
That’s extremely unkind and unfair
There’s also the genocide they’re backing in Sudan to steal their (gold?)
If it makes you happier, very little “Dubai chocolate” in shops is actually produced in Dubai and no royalties are being paid to the Dubai-based chocolatier who came up with the thing.
who owns the trademark in the US then I wonder
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/31/walmart-shake-shack-trader-joes-dubai-chocolate.html
I believe so far the consensus is that it is not trademarkable in the US and EU
“Dubai Chocolate” is a euphemism for when sex workers take a shit on some Dubai millionaire’s/billionaire’s chest. This product category was astro turfed to overload the SEO/mindshare to refer to actual chocolate instead.
I wish I was joking.
the next trend will be a chocolate nut log called the Cleveland Steamer
That’s crazy, do you have a source for this?
I don’t see any evidence to the contrary.
I’m sure they have investigated. I’d really just like any source older than the food refer to Dubai chocolate with that definition to show people — if it did work, it would be buried but still out there
Fitting that the pistachio filling in the OP picture literally looks like baby shit then
It sounds like chocolate that’s from the opposite end of the spectrum from direct-trade, sustainable chocolate, but also on purpose. Does slavery taste better?
Special shout out to Tony’s Chocolate
In 2003, after discovering that the majority of chocolate produced at the time had links to human exploitation, Teun van de Keuken began producing programs about the horrors of the commercial cocoa industry on his show Keuringsdienst van Waarde. Furthermore, he submitted a request to be prosecuted for knowingly purchasing an illegally manufactured product, which prosecutors declined to do.
Tony’s is great. It was I give out on Halloween.
Jeez are you a CEO or something? I couldn’t afford to buy one block of that stuff
Because maybe three people come to my house and I’m not left with hundreds of shitty Nestlé candy that no one will eat.
Guy who only buys unfair-trade products
Guy who eats vegan but only because animal products don’t contain enough HUMAN suffering
Vaguely reminds me of a short story I started writing but never finished about eating a 100% plant-based lifelike simulation of a human corpse
“If I can’t taste human tears on it it’s not good”
The name is definitely PR bullshit, I think the name comes from the fact that it was popularized on TikTok by a chocolatier in Dubai, rather than any actual connection in terms of the production pipeline. It’s literally just another one of those “some shit that went viral” temporary marketing trends which seem to make up half of the health and beauty section at the store now.
Having said that, kadayıf and pistachio do combine well with chocolate but it shouldn’t cost any more than a regular chocolate bar. Lindt charging quintuple what their normal bars cost is ridiculous and totally unjustifiable.
To be fair, the name itself is not anymore bullshit than the name of a lot of other sweet treats. At least it has some connection to the place it’s named after.
I don’t know but they’re trying to charge me 15 fucking dollars for a candy bar so fuck that
If I’m paying that much it better suck my dick
I independently, though obviously I knew not originally, came up with ‘for that price it better come with a blowjob’ and have been saying it for like 15 years. I’m just glad to see I’m not the only one.
Somehow we got one for like 30. It was amazing. Local chocolatier so. Still ridiculous. Still would do it again. Yum.
Also on the red pistachios thing: this is just the absurdity of the confection industry and it’s been that way since its inception. Oh, you have some Swiss chocolate you say? Where in Switzerland did they grow the cacao beans?
I don’t think there is any pistachio that has its edible part any color other than usual green.
I’ve seen this around as well and my theory is that this is just one example of chocolate makers trying to get past the price of actual cocoa to make stuff that they can still put a huge price on.
Notice how this chocolate bar mostly isn’t chocolate at all? But is still called “Dubai chocolate”. Same with all the tens of flavor bars all manufacturers are doing, they are doing it to reduce the amount of chocolate in their chocolate. Many also just use even more sugar now, but call it the same.
There are shortages and capitalism problems in the colonial industry that is chocolate making. I think this just reflects that and pretends to be something else.
I think you’re cooking with this one
In my country it got popular exactly a year ago, right when pistachio harvests couldn’t be exported due to containing too much aflatoxin, along with other pistachio products. You are probably correct in that it’s currently due to cocoa but I am getting dejavu.
Someone bought me some Dubai chocolate a while ago during the peak of the trend. I genuinely really enjoyed it and would’ve wanted more if it weren’t for the price, and also that it isn’t vegan. The packaging said it was made in Turkey, which put me a bit at ease given how messed up Dubai is; nevertheless I found it troubling how something named after freaking Dubai was suddenly everywhere, it definitely rubbed me as an attempt to reform the emirate’s PR and as a very strange trend overall. People looked very silly talking about it like it was the best thing ever.
Edit: Of course, being made in Turkey is absolutely not a guarantee that the chocolate was produced ethically — it’s still chocolate at the end of the day. I believe that after I finished the piece I was given that I said, “I wonder how hard it would be to make this at home.” Naturally, I also did some research into what the heck kadayif even was, which was an interesting enough tangent.
There’s also the factor that Dubai is associated with Luxury, and luxury goods have been popular the last few years. Probably the most since the 1980s.
Eating 10 €/bar Dubai chocolate is a more affordable Andrew Tate style statement “I’m better than you poors”
I vaguely remember getting into an argument with someone a long time ago when he tried to make an analogy about something that basically took it for granted that everybody would prefer a luxury sports car if they could get their hands on one; I said that my own dream car was actually a secondhand VW Golf Mk2 and he pretty much lost his mind about it, because he couldn’t fathom that somebody would prefer the exact opposite of a luxury good. Point is that I sometimes forget that Andrew Tate is how a lot of people think.
There was a trend calling scatological sex work “Dubai chocolate” given the elite’s proliclivites for hiring sex workers for humiliating/extreme sex acts.
So now we have a stupid chocolate bar shilled by people bought and paid for.
A while back I bought a tiny bar of Dubai chocolate from my local Arab store to see what the fuss was all about. I love chocolate and I love pistachios. Chocolate with nuts is nice. On paper I should like this.
The bar was pricey enough but it was a completely underwhelming experience. The filling was a greasy sugary pistachio cream with a very faint flavour of pistachio that was completely drowned out by the chocolate. I might have been unlucky with the specific brand but I did not feel that it was worth the money they charged for it. A bar of chocolate with hazelnuts or gianduia would have been better.
no this is just how they taste - greasy and bland
Damn they’re stealing my whole thing, this is outrageous
greasy and bland
just like my image of Dubai
This is dumb. Mid chocolate is already a luxury.
I tried some friend brought over from local chocolatier and we all thought it was really good. Kind of like a pistachio KitKat truffle. But I’ve also had better stuff from local chocolatiers. Its just a nice new flavor profile but over-hyped.
According to a book I’ve glimpsed at that talks about online bots
spoiler
it’s to prevent people from talking about the scat fetish of rich Dubai sheikhs
Ah so this is like a pop star that doesn’t want people to talk about her private jet usage dating a football player from the Jets to disrupt the algorithm?
yep, except with human trafficking
what book
don’t remember the author but it has a title of “الذباب الالكتروني”
I sampled some out as shrink for the break room during the peak of the trend. Trying it for free had most people agree it’s deeply overrated.
when average treatlerite sees opportunity to finance their favorite slave state, they take it.
(probably people simping for influencers, who launder their money in uae)
Though not one of his best, Blindboy touched on Dubai chocolate some months back in the episode “Fairy Forts, Anthrax, Dubai Chocolate bars and Seagulls are all intimately connected and flow as one in the cognitive ether.”
If it’s not made in dubai it’s just sparkling pistachio chocolate.