If your social media algorithm skews toward things to eat, you’ve witnessed the Dubai chocolate bar.
You can almost taste the pistachio cream and strips of crisped phyllo as a TikTok influencer cracks open one of these coveted bars and takes slow bites. A friend told me they were available at JinJu Patisserie in Portland. I immediately wondered if I could find one here in Clark County.
I hope-scrolled through Instagram and I came across something that seemed like a chocolate-seeking hallucination: the new bakery and chocolatier, Home Macaron (16209 S.E. McGillivray Blvd., Vancouver; 564- 227-0829) offers Dubai chocolate bars.
I soon discovered that Battle Ground-based Whimsy Chocolates offers the bars at the business’s shop at Mountain Timber Market (254 Hendrickson Drive, Suite 105, Kalama), as does Sweet Touch (4804 N.E. Thurston Way, Unit E; 360-896-6693) by Vancouver Mall.
The Dubai chocolate bar was invented by Sarah Hamouda at Fix Dessert Chocolatier in Dubai in 2021 to feed a pregnancy craving. She called her creation Can’t Get Knafeh of It. Hamouda took a popular Middle Eastern confection called knafeh, modified it, and encased it in a chocolate bar. The result is pistachio cream and crunchy shreds of phyllo called kadayif covered in chocolate. Before a single one of these special treats landed in the United States, it became a global obsession.
Home Macaron was the first place I visited. Natalia Serzhanina opened her macaron and chocolate shop in mid-December. The lovely spot has places to sit and a glass case filled with stunningly beautiful macarons in flavors such as tiramisu, raspberry, Biscoff and Snickers, as well as an array of exquisite handmade chocolates, but I was on a very specific mission. I needed to try her Dubai chocolate bar.
The Dubai chocolate bar here comes in milk or dark chocolate ($25), as a heart-shaped chocolate ($12) or mini-hearts ($5). I chose the milk chocolate bar made with Home Macaron’s housemade pistachio cream and precut kadayif crisped in butter encased in Belgian Callebaut milk chocolate and decorated with colored powdered cocoa to create a splatter paint effect.
It’s rare that food fantasies manifest into reality, but in this case this chocolate bar was as good as I imagined. The strings of crispy phyllo melded with the rich pistachio cream coated in rich milk chocolate. The pistachio cream in this bar was the creamiest of all the bars I tried and was a nice counterpoint to the crunchy strings of phyllo that were suspended in it. This was the largest and thinnest of all the bars that I tried. Eaten a square or two at a time with a cup of espresso, it lasted almost a week. Home Macaron also makes a Dubai chocolate inspired macaron that I must try soon.
Sweet Touch near Vancouver Mall is well known for gorgeous pastries as well as Eastern European dishes like pelmeni and borscht. The shop offers small Dubai chocolate cheesecake bites ($9) as well as Dubai chocolate bars ($12). Olga Mikhalets sourced high quality Luker Chocolate and a pistachio paste from Switzerland to create this TikTok famous confection for her businesses, Sweet Touch and Camas Market & Bakery (2940 N.E. Everett St., Camas; 360-834-4657). It took a couple of attempts, but I finally got my hands on one of her Dubai chocolate bars at Sweet Touch. It was smaller and thicker than Home Macaron’s version and half the price. The butter-crisped threads of kadayif completely soaked up the pistachio cream resulting in a firm, crunchy center. The chocolate was high quality as was the filling.
Getting a Dubai bar from Whimsy Chocolates proved illusory. There’s no phone number for the shop at Mountain Timber Market so I couldn’t double-check that and make sure the Dubai bar was available. I emailed the owner days before I drove to her Kalama shop and was told they were in stock. When I arrived, there was a display of Dubai chocolate bars but not the original pistachio. The remaining choices subbed hazelnut or peanut butter for the pistachio cream ($30 per bar). I chose the vanilla hazelnut. It tasted like a crunchy Nutella bar. Good, but not what I was seeking. The original Dubai bar is available through Whimsy’s website ($30 plus $8 for shipping).
Searching for this coveted confection for a week felt like a scavenger hunt. Sometimes Dubai chocolate bars are in stock, sometimes not. Home Macaron was the only place that had a good supply on my first visit. This was also my favorite bar. Home Macaron’s housemade pistachio filling was creamier and lighter than the others, which had a thicker nut butter consistency. I also like the flatter shape of the bar. Nonetheless, Sweet Touch’s version was excellent and half the price.
If you want to get your hands on a Dubai bar, have patience and be persistent or mail order from Whimsy. Chasing a food trend isn’t a spectator sport.
