Green Gold: How a Viral Chocolate Bar Sparked a Global Pistachio Shortage

It is thick, it is messy, and when you snap it in half a river of bright green cream oozes out to a satisfying crackle. The so called Dubai chocolate bar has become one of the most talked about foods on the planet, and its runaway success has done something no ordinary candy ever could. It has thrown the entire global pistachio market into chaos.

The bar that broke the internet

At its heart, Dubai chocolate is a simple but inspired idea. A thick shell of milk chocolate is filled with a gooey blend of pistachio cream and crunchy shredded pastry called kataifi, a knowing nod to knafeh, the beloved cheese and pastry dessert of the Middle East.

The contrast is the whole point. You get the snap of the chocolate, the toasty crunch of the pastry and the rich, nutty sweetness of the pistachio, all in a single decadent mouthful, and it is precisely that theatrical texture that made the bar irresistible to a camera hungry internet.

From a craving to a craze

The original creation came from a boutique maker in the United Arab Emirates called FIX Dessert Chocolatier, founded by Sarah Hamouda and her husband. The story goes that the recipe was born from her pregnancy cravings, and the flagship bar was given the irresistibly punny name Can't Get Knafeh Of It.

For a while it was a local secret, until a single social media video changed everything. Posted toward the end of 2023, the clip of someone blissfully biting into the oozing bar exploded across TikTok, gathering well over a hundred million views and igniting a worldwide hunt for a taste.

The pistachio price spiral

That is where the humble pistachio enters the story. As demand for the green filling went stratospheric, the price of the nut itself began to climb sharply, with reports suggesting it jumped from around eight dollars a pound to over ten in the space of a single year.

In Dubai, the epicenter of the craze, traders felt the squeeze even faster. Wholesale pistachio prices there leapt by roughly ten dirhams a kilo in just two months, according to the Khaleej Times, with the sought after Iranian variety in particular jumping the most as buyers scrambled to secure supply.

The chocolatiers themselves were part of the problem. As small makers scaled up to meet the frenzy, many began buying pistachios directly from the largest suppliers and manufacturers, hoovering up so much stock that shortages started to appear even at the wholesale level, long before the nuts reached ordinary shoppers.

A perfect storm of supply and demand

The timing could hardly have been worse for supply. The explosion in appetite for pistachio filling, reportedly up well over a hundred percent, collided head on with difficult growing conditions in Iran and Turkey, two of the giants of global pistachio production.

With drought weighing on those harvests just as the world clamored for more, the market was left badly short. Some retailers were reportedly forced to ration their pistachios or tweak their recipes, a startling situation for a nut most people had rarely given a second thought.

Here to stay

The most surprising twist is that the craze has refused to fade. Long after the original viral moment, search interest in Dubai chocolate has remained enormously elevated, reportedly still up around four hundred and fifty percent on the year before, a sign the bar has settled into lasting popularity rather than fizzling out.

The sales figures tell the same story. In the United States, unit sales of pistachio filled chocolate reportedly rocketed by more than a thousand percent in a single year, as shoppers who could not get hold of the original snapped up any version they could find on the shelves.

Inevitably, the copycats came flooding in. Supermarkets, artisan chocolatiers and global brands alike rushed out their own pistachio and kataifi bars, and the once niche flavor has since spread into everything from lattes and ice cream to croissants and spreads.

The wider pistachio moment

What began as one clever chocolate bar has, in effect, crowned the pistachio as the flavor of the moment. Its gentle green color photographs beautifully, its taste feels both exotic and comforting, and it has ridden the Dubai chocolate wave to become a genuine culinary star.

For the rest of us, the saga is a delicious reminder of how connected our modern food world has become. A single viral video in one city can, within months, empty orchards on the other side of the planet, proving that in the age of social media even a snack can move markets.