Move over, K-Pop Demon Hunters, Labubus, Taylor Swift’s engagement photos and middle-aged women obsessed with The Summer I Turned Pretty. The most viral pop culture trend of 2025 might be actually a pistachio-filled chocolate bar.Dubai chocolate bars, famous for their creamy green interior and satisfying crunch, have been flying off the shelves all year.They’ve gone viral on TikTok, contributed to a global pistachio shortage, been part of a Canadian recall due to salmonella risks, are the reason pistachio has been declared “the flavour of 2025,” and launched a thousand copycats. “This is literally the most viral thing on the internet but I don’t really get it. It’s just a stuffed chocolate bar,” food TikToker “Jack’s Dining Room” said last year in a video that has 12.4 million views.“I’ve never seen a single item sell like this in my 50 years of retailing,” Stew Leonard Jr., CEO of Stew Leonard’s grocery stores in the U.S., recently told the Associated Press. Pieces of Dubai chocolate with gold leaf are pictured at Abu Khaled Sweets oriental pastry shop in Berlin’s Wedding district on Nov. 14, 2024. Ali Fakhro makes and sells Dubai chocolate — a trend that has recently gone viral on social media. (Tobias Schwarz/AFP/Getty Images)Canadian brand Purdy’s Chocolatier noted “the strong consumer demand for Dubai-inspired treats” when it launched its “pistachio crunch” chocolates last month. Rocky Mountain Chocolate and Nova Scotia-based Peace By Chocolate also sell their own versions. So do many smaller shops, like Ottawa’s Pistachio Choco and Toronto’s Turkish Mart.Swiss chocolate giant Lindt has a bar. You can buy Dubai-style chocolate at Costco, at Staples Canada and at Walmart. And for those willing to dig deep, they can bid on the original brand that launched the trend on eBay for anywhere from $60 to $150 for a single bar.An image taken from a March 2025 Instagram post by Winnipeg’s Oh Doughnuts advertising doughnuts based on the viral Dubai chocolate bar. (@ohdougnuts/Instagram)For a Canadian spin on the treat, you can even find donuts inspired by the trend in small shops like Winnipeg’s Oh Doughnuts and Toronto’s Machino Donuts.There are some 61,000 TikTok videos tagged “Dubai Chocolate Bar,” Dubai chocolate is a top trend on Pinterest Canada, and while Google searches in Canada peaked in March, they’re still going strong. It’s nuts. But what exactly is behind the craze? A bar is bornAs the name suggests, it started in Dubai.The original and now-classic Dubai chocolate bar was created by Fix Dessert Chocolatier in the United Arab Emirates in 2021, where it’s called the “Can’t Get Knafeh Of It” bar and is sold for 68.25 AED, or about $26 Cdn.Rich and indulgent, it features a thick, milk chocolate shell encasing a creamy pistachio filling mixed with tahini paste and a crispy, shredded, phyllo-like pastry called kadayif. An instagram post by Fix Dessert Chocolatier from Sept. 29, 2025, shows the original viral Dubai chocolate bar (@FixDessertChocolatier/Instagram)It’s inspired by the Middle Eastern dessert knafeh.“It’s been incredibly humbling to see our original ‘Can’t Get Knafeh Of It’ bar start a whole new confectionery category,” Sarah Hamouda, co-founder of FIX Dessert Chocolatier, told CBC News in an email statement.”We love seeing small businesses that have been inspired by our ‘Dubai Chocolate’ flavour, whether that’s in the form of a doughnut in Canada or a matcha in Japan.” The original bar is so popular that it’s only on sale at 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. local time daily in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and only available through Deliveroo or at the Dubai airport, according to an automated message on the company’s Instagram page.The original “Can’t Get Knafeh Of It” bar was already listed as sold out when CBC News checked the Deliveroo site at 5:32 p.m. local Dubai time. Last year, Fix founder Hamouda told the publication Today that they get up to 100 orders for the bar per minute.Sarah Houmada is the co-founder of FIX Dessert Chocolatier in Dubai. (Submitted by Sarah Houmada)The bar goes viralWith its orange and green swirls, smooth surface, unusually thick build, and satisfying crunch, the bar is practically made for social media, writes BBC. And that’s precisely why Dubai chocolate exploded in popularity in 2023, with multiple media outlets reporting it was a viral video by TikTok influencer Maria Vehera that launched its fame.In the video, posted Dec. 18, 2023, Vehera munches on the bar in her car, crunching away as the sticky pistachio filling oozes out of the chocolate. It’s been viewed a whopping 139.2 million times so far.”Do u know what you caused?” commented one person on the post recently.”This is where it all started,” commented another.Today, there are millions of TikTok views on posts about Dubai chocolate.In one, with 22.9 million views, a man simply silently eats a giant Dubai-chocolate-inspired Easter bunny from beginning to end (or in this case, from end to ears).”1% = chocolate. 99% pistachio,” commented someone, adding a heart-eye emoji. That comment was liked 22,700 times.The pistachio boomBut what came first — the viral, gooey chocolate bar, or the pistachio boom?People have been enjoying the nuts for centuries, but globally, searches for pistachios began to rise in 2021, reports Australia’s ABC News — around the same time Fix Desserts Chocolatier debuted its “Can’t Get Knafeh Of It” bar.Food and Wine magazine in March declared pistachio “the flavour of 2025,” and said Dubai chocolate was at least partly behind the craze. In January, the Guardian called pistachio “the new pumpkin spice.” (Indeed, Starbucks announced the return of the Pistachio Latte and the new Pistachio Cream Cold Brew in 2023). In Canada, the pistachio boom came amid its link to an ongoing salmonella outbreak. Since July, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has issued dozens of recalls for products including certain brands of pistachio kernels, baklava, ice cream and chocolate. Pistachios being hand-sorted at the Wonderful Pistachios & Almonds processing plant in California. The nut was declared the flavour of 2025 by Food and Wine magazine. (Damian Dovarganes/The Associated Press)In September, the CFIA temporarily banned pistachio imports from Iran as a “precautionary measure.” Iran, the U.S., and Turkey are the most prolific pistachio producers.The craze also contributed to a pistachio shortage this year. In April, California-based Meridian Growers reported a sharp drop in its shipments due to increasing demand and not enough supply. Pistachio supply is also affected by the tree’s biennial cycle, in which an abundant harvest year is followed by a considerably smaller one. “Much of this demand can be attributed to the ‘Dubai Chocolate effect,’ and the amount of social media and consumer interest in pistachios is undergoing. Pistachios are the ‘IT NUT’ for 2025, Meridian wrote in the report. Iranian nut producer Keinia has also reported a shortage, while adding that prices have surged globally by about 30 per cent. It said the primary reason for the shortage is “the explosive surge in demand fuelled by the viral ’Dubai chocolate’ TikTok trend, compounded by underlying supply constraint.” This isn’t the first time we’ve seen demand surge for a food item based on social media trends, explained Michael von Massow, a food agriculture professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario. The price of carrots, for instance, suddenly increased in 2022, around the time that nutrition influencers were posting about the health benefits of the viral “raw carrot salad,” von Massow told CBC News. Supply couldn’t keep up with demand, he added.”Any food item can become trendy or less so, but I think this one for pistachio is largely driven by the chocolate,” he said.WATCH | Viral chocolate bar behind recall:Dubai brand chocolate among items recalled over salmonella risk
Dubai chocolate is everywhere. But what came first the viral sweet or the pistachio boom?
