If you’ve looked around and checked some menus, you’d see that “Dubai chocolate” is all the rage. I saw Lindt selling it while leaving the grocery store, the bougie donut shop has a seasonal Dubai chocolate donut, and a cart opened up selling it locally too.
How has pistachio + chocolate been able to inspire such a marketing blitz? Why do 3 real estate conglomerates in a trench coat pretending to be a country need to invent a new dessert? Lastly, since Dubai is close to Iran, where I assume they source their pistachios, shouldn’t all this pistachio stuff be red?
There’s nothing wrong with the idea of a new flavour of sweets. It’s about the most benign soft-power/cultural exchange I can think of. Charging $20 a bar though is exploiting a trend.
The local grocer was selling a “Dubai” bar made in Turkey for about the same price as Hershey and it wasn’t bad. Reminded me mostly of a KitKat for the texture, but the chocolate itself was very creamy. I guess the trend crested because the standup display of bars was gone after a few weeks and not replaced. :/
I don’t really think of Turkey as a source for confectionery-- UK, BE, DE, CH, maybe FR obviously have the mindshare-- but I noticed the “store brand” versions of Twix and such they sell at Walmart are also imported from there.
Baklava and Turkish delight come to mind but I went to Istanbul a few years and noticed a large amounts of confectioners, so may not occur to those who’ve mainly associated confectionery with chocolate