A Dubai-style chocolate bar cut open to show its pistachio filling. Photo WiseWoman, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Who made this bar is not recorded; no freely licensed photo of Fix Dessert Chocolatier’s original bar could be found.
Dubai chocolate
What it took directly
- documentedDubai chocolate took from Sarah Hamouda's pregnancy cravings, in 2021"The bars were first invented in 2021 by Sarah Hamouda, a British-Egyptian living in Dubai. When she was pregnant with her second child, her cravings inspired her to come up with a chocolate bar" The Guardian (Emine Saner, April 2025)
- documentedFix's “Can’t Get Knafeh of It” bar comes from a partnership between chef Nouel Catis Omamalin and Sarah Hamouda, who teamed up in 2021 to launch Fix"Originally sold by Fix Dessert Chocolatier in Dubai, “Can’t Get Knafeh of It” is the brainchild of Filipino chef Nouel Catis Omamalin and British Egyptian entrepreneur Sarah Hamouda, who partnered in 2021 to launch the company." Arab News (Samantha Beltran, Sept 2024)
- statedDubai chocolate took from the question its makers asked, in chef Nouel Catis Omamalin's telling: why not a dessert in a chocolate bar?"Everyone was just having the same kind of (chocolate) bar, and we thought, why not have a dessert in a chocolate bar? And knafeh is my favorite Arabic dessert" Nouel Catis Omamalin, to Arab News (Sept 2024)
- documentedDubai chocolate's worldwide craze comes from Maria Vehera's video of herself tasting the bar in her car, December 2023"One of them was Maria Vehera, who posts ecstatic videos of herself trying delicious new treats in her car. The video of her trying Dubai chocolate went viral in December 2023 and has now had more than 122m views." The Guardian (Emine Saner, April 2025)
What it learned to do
- statedDubai chocolate's flavours learned from Nouel Catis Omamalin's habit of cooking from nostalgia and childhood memories"I always go back to the nostalgia of things, the childhood memories of a certain culture, even any culture in general" Nouel Catis Omamalin, to Arab News (Sept 2024)
- documentedNouel Catis Omamalin learned from L’Ecole Valrhona Paris, where he trained as a pastry chef"Omamalin was born and raised in the Philippines, and trained as a pastry chef at L’Ecole Valrhona Paris." Arab News (Sept 2024)
- inferredSarah Hamouda learned from the people she made the bar with, chef Nouel Catis Omamalin among them"I threw myself into learning everything I could, and along the way, I had the privilege of working with some truly amazing people who helped bring this dream to life." inferred — The Guardian reports Omamalin helped her create the bar; Hamouda thanks the people she worked with but does not name a teacher
The tradition it sits in
- documentedDubai chocolate comes from knafeh, a traditional Middle Eastern dessert of shredded pastry, soft cheese and syrup"with the crunch of knafeh, a traditional Middle Eastern dessert made from shredded filo, soft cheese and syrup." The Guardian (April 2025)
- documentedDubai chocolate's rise comes from the pistachio boom that the food-trend firm Tastewise had been tracking"And the explosion of pistachio was everywhere. So would Dubai chocolate have exploded if it wasn’t with the tailwind of the pistachio prevalence? Probably not." Alon Chen, chief executive of Tastewise, to The Guardian (April 2025)
- statedFix Dessert Chocolatier comes from Dubai's mix of cultures and communities"The diversity of cultures, the acceptance, the community — all of that shaped who we are." Sarah Hamouda, to Gulf News (Manjusha Radhakrishnan, June 2025)
Where the whole form comes from
- documentedKnafeh, the crunch inside the bar, comes from an unnamed medieval cook who dribbled batter onto a heated metal “mirror” to make ready-made strips"in the Middle Ages some cook hit on the idea of dribbling the batter onto the “mirror” for ready-made strips." Charles Perry, Los Angeles Times (May 1999)
Start here