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How a Chocolate Bar From Dubai Took Over the World


It was a being pregnant longing for knafeh that received Sarah Hamouda dreaming in chocolate, imagining a bar that recalled the crunchy-creamy Middle Eastern dessert of her British Egyptian childhood.

“I instructed my husband the following day that I needed to start out a chocolate enterprise,” she stated from her residence in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.



She’d by no means made chocolate earlier than. But, undeterred and midway by her being pregnant, she started working from her lounge, with the weather of knafeh (cream or akkawi cheese, shredded phyllo often called kataifi, nuts or date syrup, and orange blossom or rose water) in thoughts. Eventually, her “Can’t Get Knafeh of It” bar was born, a milk chocolate shell bursting with pistachio cream and kataifi and adorned with shiny yellow and electrical inexperienced splotches.

Mrs. Hamouda had no concept that it might tackle a lifetime of its personal, incomes the nickname “Dubai chocolate” amongst followers on-line and spurring numerous imitations.

In truth, when the couple opened their on-line store in 2022, FIX Dessert Chocolatier — FIX, they stated, stands for Freaking Incredible eXperience — “we have been promoting a couple of bar per week,” stated Yezen Alani, Mrs. Hamouda’s husband.

Not one fashion of bar. One single bar.

“There have been so many days we needed to surrender,” Mrs. Hamouda stated.

Then got here the viral TikTok video.

After the couple reluctantly took a fan’s suggestion and despatched some chocolate bars to native influencers, Maria Vehera posted an A.S.M.R.-style TikTok displaying off its snappy shell and cascading pistachio cream, then taking a giant, messy chunk.

It led to a waterfall of orders, Mr. Alani stated — not less than 30,000, which is when the supply app they have been utilizing crashed.

“It was just like the scene in ‘The Bear’ the place the tickets wouldn’t cease coming in,” he stated.

Mrs. Hamouda stated, “I bear in mind throwing my cellphone into the road.”

Things are higher now: The FIX group has grown to 50. The bar has gained a world following. Lindt, the Swiss chocolatier, even created a model for a restricted launch of 300 bars in December. (It bought out in a day.) And the British supply app Deliveroo stated that, final 12 months, the Can’t Get Knafeh bar was the highest merchandise ordered worldwide.

While Mrs. Hamouda and Mr. Alani object to the quite a few variations bought by massive corporations, they like it when small companies and residential cooks “do their very own takes.”

Venessa Liang, an oncology pharmacist and chocolatier often called FoodiePharmBabe on social media, bought her “Taste of Dubai” bar, made with a darkish chocolate shell, gold chocolate filling with pistachio cream, toasted turmeric kataifi and caramelized pistachios, for 100 Canadian {dollars} (about $70) per bar. They bought out in three to 5 minutes, she stated.

For Ms. Liang, Dubai chocolate’s magic is in its crowd-pleasing base substances and their adaptability: She’s even been utilizing them in home made ice cream. “Those flavors simply work,” she stated.

The Can’t Get Knafeh bar could have a maintain on the remainder of the world, however Mrs. Hamouda says she’s already transferring on. This week FIX is releasing a bar, made with caramelized pecans and cookies: It’s known as “Catch Me If Pecan.”

“The identify is a bit cheeky,” she stated, including “it’s like our approach of claiming to the remainder of the chocolate world, ‘You need to catch as much as us.’”



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Written by EGN NEWS DESK

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