Best Valentine’s Day chocolates come in bars

Anyone that’s scrolled though social media channels in the last year will have caught influencers breaking into hefty blue-and-yellow-splattered milk chocolate bars packed with gooey neon green pistachio-tahini paste mixed with crispy kataifi (a finely shredded type of phyllo, popular in Middle Eastern sweets). The viral “Dubai chocolate bar” was created four years ago by United Arab Emirates-based Sarah Hamouda, founder of Fix Dessert Chocolatier, a delivery-only chocolate bar shop.

But thanks to TikTok, the Can’t Get Knafeh of It bar went so viral that people have reported planning holidays around it and companies like Costco and Godiva have knocked it off.

The bar would be the ultimate Valentine’s Day gift. But there’s a problem: Fix only sells their small-production bars to residents in Dubai and Abu Dhabi to maintain quality and freshness.

So chocolatiers ranging from Lindt to Etsy entrepreneurs have been making their own versions. The trend has expanded beyond bars: New York’s Italian-styled ice cream shop Caffè Panna recently introduced its Dubai Chocolate ice cream. Founder Hallie Meyer’s frozen treat, laced with dark chocolate stracciatella, Sicilian pistachio ganache and twice-baked butter and sugar-coated kataifi, sold out last week within 60 seconds. For the next month, she plans to release pints on Wednesdays at 1:30 p.m. at her Manhattan and Brooklyn scoop shops in limited-edition drops.

In honor of the #DubaiChocolate trend, Bloomberg Pursuits is casting aside traditional bonbons and heart-shaped boxes and training its focus on the chocolate bar. We sampled around 50 of the newest bars from the world’s top chocolatiers, and below we rounded up our nine favorites. Our picks include stunning options like an ultra-floral dark chocolate, a bar inspired by an iconic restaurant dessert and a light and milky toasted coconut option. And, yes, there’s one that may or may not be taking its cues from the now classic Dubai creation.

• État de Choc Pistache

Maud Gaudreau, founder of Quebec’s premiere design-forward chocolate brand État de Choc, insists this hefty 140-gram, nearly ¾-inch-thick bar wasn’t inspired by Fix’s viral creation (though it’s the most similar to the Can’t Get Knafeh of It on this list). Ultra-rich, creamy and indulgent, the bar is made of organic California pistachio butter, bits of organic toasted rice and a touch of salt sourced from the nearby St. Lawrence River. Enveloped in 70 percent dark chocolate from the Philippines, this decadent creation was our top pick among what we sampled. $20

• The Organic House Vanilla Bean & Sea Salt

A kaleidoscope of tropical and floral flavors burst out of this silky vanilla-bean-infused bar, crafted from Vietnam’s toasty, fruit-forward Dak Lak variety cacao bean. The team behind Ontario, Canada’s the Organic House gently sweeten the 60 percent cacao bar with coconut flower nectar and local maple syrup, finishing it with coarse sea salt. $9

• Melissa Coppel French Toast

“I got inspired by the most delicious French toast I have ever tried,” says former L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon Las Vegas sous chef Melissa Coppel of her delicate candy bar, which she introduced last month. A wafery hazelnut-brioche layer sits atop a brown butter, rum and cinnamon ganache, which Coppel enrobes in a 49 percent Ghana milk chocolate. It’s reminiscent of a Twix bar, but on a whole different level $15

• K+M Chocolate Coffee + Doughnuts

Chef Thomas Keller’s newest K+M Chocolate creation pays homage to his iconic Napa Valley dining room, the French Laundry, and its renowned cappuccino semifreddo with cinnamon-sugar doughnuts. Crafted for the restaurant’s 30th anniversary, this buttery 49 percent Peruvian milk chocolate bar is infused with coffee and dusted with cinnamon shortbread crumbs, sugar crystals and cinnamon, capturing the essence of the celebrated dessert. $15

• Goodnow Farms Chocolate Passion Fruit and Cream

This beautifully balanced confection marries high-acid passion fruit with 62 percent Guatemalan cacao blended into a bright and floral dark milk chocolate bar. Goodnow Farms founders Monica and Tom Rogan introduced this as a limited release two years ago; in response to overwhelming customer feedback, they’ve brought it back as a special-edition bar again this year. Key to their fine-flavored single-origin chocolates is the silky texture—like a fine cashmere sweater—the result of blending a single-origin chocolate with freshly pressed same single-origin cocoa butter. $18

• Christopher Elbow Toasted Coconut Crunch

Although renowned for his vibrant hand-painted bonbons, Missouri-based Christopher Elbow’s latest release pays homage to the classic duo of chocolate and coconut, featuring a creamy 34 percent milk chocolate base—from the French chocolate company Valrhona—infused with crispy, toasted coconut and sea salt for a subtle crunch and caramel-like sweetness. Every couple of years Elbow updates his Signature Chocolate Bar line; this is the newest addition. $10

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Eldora Craft Chocolate 70 percent Lavaloha Hawaii

“This is an extremely rare chocolate, so we don’t just put it online,” explains former private-wealth-adviser-turned-chocolatier Steve Prickett. If he did, he claims, it would immediately sell out. Prickett’s limited-edition 1-ounce gold-foil-wrapped bar is made from cacao with notes of rose and mango that’s grown in the black soils of Hilo, Hawaii’s ancient lava fields. He sells it at his Albuquerque, New Mexico, studio and shop, and if you call, he will ship it. This is a beautiful bar for connoisseurs—the perfect singular treat for the chocolate purist who’s tried everything. $7; 505-433-4076

• Vigdis Rosenkilde 80 percent Echarate Dark Chocolate

Norway native Vigdis Rosenkilde sources sustainable and direct-trade cacao from Peru, where she believes the finest plants grow. She crafts bright two-ingredient chocolates, made only with cacao and sugar, that are so intoxicatingly floral and fruity you’d swear she infused them with tropical fruits such as banana and pineapple. Her dedication to raw ingredients shines through in her packaging; the chocolate bars are packed in boxes adorned with images of cacao plants. Made with the rare Chuncho cacao, a variety known for its high-fat content and balanced acidity, Rosenkilde’s current batch of 80 percent Echarate is, she says, “the best I’ve created so far.” It recently hit the US market. $16

• Fruition Chocolate Works Fresh Mint

Operating out of a workshop in the foothills of upstate New York’s Catskills Mountains, Bryan Graham and his wife, Dahlia, produce nuanced bean-to-bar chocolates. To create a fresh mint taste, they refine mint from their garden with a hint of the herb’s essential oil and infuse it into a chocolate crafted from Ugandan cacao. The result is a 54 percent milk chocolate bar perfumed with sweet mint. $14