Where to bite into the Dubai chocolate bar craze in Orange County
For months, a flurry of “FoodTok” videos on social media have touted a luscious chocolate bar from Dubai filled with pistachio paste and knafeh, a shredded phyllo dough pastry.
Dubbed the “Dubai chocolate bar” by TikTok users, the viral sensation first took off from Fix Dessert Chocolatier in the emirate capital.
But the sweet-toothed among us don’t need a one-way ticket to Dubai to experience the buzzworthy bar that is both creamy and crunchy in texture and taste.
Over the summer, local bakeries in Orange County have added their own interpretations of the Dubai chocolate bar to their repertoire, bringing its gustatory bliss much closer to home. With Anaheim hosting the first officially designated Arab American enclave in the nation, the bars aren’t hard to find both in-and-around its Little Arabia district.
And the trend is far from fluff.
Sure, food fads pass without a trace when once they tempted taste buds on and offline, for better or worse. Remember those trendy churros looped into ice cream cups a couple years ago? Try finding them now.
But the Dubai chocolate bar may prove to be more sturdily sweet as a tasty twist on tradition.
“Seeing something that you ate growing up go viral is crazy,” Dana Gharaibeh, baker and owner of Sweetheart’s Dessert Lounge in Anaheim, told TimesOC. “It’s a more modern way to eat knafeh. This chocolate bar is super delicious.”
Here’s four businesses in Orange County where the beloved Dubai chocolate bar awaits your appetite.
Jerusalem Roastery
12531 Harbor Blvd.
Garden Grove
Nestled next to Shawarma House in a Garden Grove shopping plaza, Jerusalem Roastery offers packaged treats, like date-filled cookies known as mamool, rows of Middle Eastern candies, spices, nuts and trays of freshly baked knafeh. But tucked into a corner in a fridge where drinks are kept cool is a tray of Jerusalem Roastery’s house-made Dubai chocolate bars, which have been a hit since the business first opened in July. The snack sensation comes in one size at $7.99 per bar, and is thicker than most. The milk chocolate bar is drizzled with green pistachio cream atop. Inside, toasted knafeh gives the bar an impressionable crunch.
Think of it as a super-sized Arabic Kit Kat bar, only better!
Le Mirage Pastry
100 S. Brookhurst St. Anaheim
As mentioned before, Anaheim’s Little Arabia is a safe bet when it comes to finding Dubai chocolate bars. Le Mirage Pastry, known best for its Syrian bouza ice cream, has a poster advertising its take on the viral hit, with a marbled bar breaking in half to show off its tasty filings. Bakery owner Maher Nakhal was quick to the craze and started offering his take on the chocolate bar more than two months ago. Most closely resembling the Dubai bars that started the trend, both in appearance (and price, at $20 each), Nakhal’s wide, squared bars are stuffed with knafeh, pistachio paste, pistachios and tahini. He reports that once offered, Le Mirage Pastry received a volume of calls — with some patrons making a long trek for a taste.
“We were the first ones to do it,” Nakhal said. “Some people drive for two hours to get here, from Temecula and even Bakersfield.”
Knafeh Café
866 S. Brookhurst St.
Anaheim
For years, Asem Abusir has whipped up trays of sweet-and-salty knafeh undergirded by its signature Nabulsi cheese at Knafeh Café. For the past few weeks, his Little Arabia bakery has taken shredded phyllo dough and repurposed it as the filing of the much sought-after Dubai chocolate bar. The snack comes in a golden wrapper, which makes patrons feel like they’ve found a coveted Wonka ticket before even peeling the foil back. A bite into the bar reveals the creamy emerald green pistachio goodness inside. At $12 per bar, Knafeh Café initially thought the snack might be a fading trend, but when the phone lines aren’t blowing up, some customers come through the doors just to exclusively buy them.
Sweetheart’s Dessert Lounge
301 S. Anaheim Blvd. Unit B,
Anaheim
Ahead of its one-year anniversary this month, Sweetheart’s Dessert Lounge began offering the bars in small, medium and large sizes at varying prices from $6 to $15. It paid off with a rush of summertime customers forming long lines outside the business near Anaheim’s Packing House. Still, as summer winds down, a chalkboard sign outside of Sweetheart’s Dessert Lounge boasts its Dubai chocolate bars on a “first come, first serve” basis. In preparing the bars, baker Dana Gharaibeh begins toasting shredded phyllo dough in the oven with butter the day before. The kataifi inside gives the bars their signature crunch — and each bite from Sweetheart’s provides that scrumptious sound that social media can only hint at. Gharaibeh uses Belgium chocolate to coat the filings, a choice that dials up the decadence. Lastly, the bakery turned to TikTok to spread the word about its special, which racked up nearly 87,000 views.
“We didn’t take TikTok too seriously,” she said. “My mom and I recorded the TikTok, but a lot of people ended up seeing it. For the first few days, we had lines like never before.”
Just then, a youngster walked in and ordered two chocolate bars to go.
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