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Every few months the foodies go crazy over some new gustatory trend. Even here in Albuquerque, we’ve witnessed firsthand the birria explosion, the charcuterie panic, the Korean corn dog craze. (It seems we dodged the “fluffy Coke” trend – don’t ask.) And if online food blogs, TikTok influencers and local foodie chat boards are any indication, the latest “gotta try it” food craze has arrived. And its name is Dubai Chocolate.
Dubai Chocolate is basically a honkin’ big milk chocolate bar packed with pistachio cream and tahini and knafeh (also known as kunafa), a crispy shredded phyllo pastry. The sweet-and-crunchy trend began late last summer when the Dubai-based Fix dessert Chocolatier started importing its “Can’t Get Knafeh of It” candy bar to American shores. Before long, caught up in the viral rush of demand, Middle Eastern bakeries and restaurants across the country started making their own overstuffed chocolate bars.
In Albuquerque several enterprising home chefs are producing the bars (MAD Macrons, Milly’s Dubai Chocolate). Monaco Market (4400 Wyoming Blvd. NE) and Alquds Mediterranean Grill and Grocery (5555 Montgmery Blvd. NE) both stock the imported candies in limited quantities. “Dubai strawberries” have shown up in several different food trucks. And Pop-Pop’s Italian Ice (6300 San Mateo Blvd. NE) now makes a Dubai chocolate ice cream cone. Folks with a sweet tooth are in the middle of a full-blown Dubai chocolate rain.
In November of last year, longtime UNM-area eatery Sahara Middle Eastern Food (2622 Central Ave. SE) announced it was starting a whole new affiliate business, Sahara Sweets, which would produce specialty Arabic deserts, including Dubai chocolate. Owner Haytham Khalil – known to friends and loyal customers as “Tom” – says he learned about the Dubai chocolate trend because, “My wife follows it on TikTok. That’s how I knew it was so big.” Inspired by that knowledge, Khalil took his family on a vacation/business trip to Dubai in July of last year. There, he says, the family “met the right people” and spent two weeks “learning how to perfect the chocolate.” And now, says the newly minted chocolatier, “Mine is even better than Dubai.”
Instead of the usual milk chocolate, Sahara Sweets uses “high quality Belgian dark chocolate.” Although some makers experiment with new flavors, Khalil sticks with the traditional Dubai fillings and insists his “mix of dark and sweet” gives Sahara’s bars the edge. Evidently, he’s correct. By December the company put up a vending machine in Cottonwood Mall, which regularly sells out of the in-demand items ($20 for large bars, $15 for pistachio truffles and $12 for small bars). On January 3 a second Sahara Sweets Dubai Chocolate machine went in up north at Santa Fe Place Mall.
“I was the first one to put Dubai chocolate in a vending machine,” brags Khalil. Now, of course, he’s stuck filling those machines. “I am the service man, the stocker, and I make the chocolate,” says Khalil, who opens up his restaurant at 10:30 a.m. only after making the trip to Santa Fe and Rio Rancho to make sure the vending machines are full and functional.
All of Sahara Sweets’ products are produced “in-house” at the company’s flagship restaurant. The company spent three months getting health department approval for their processing license. This allows them to sell through the vending machines as well as to other stores and restaurants who want to stock Dubai chocolate.
If things continue to pan out, Cottonwood and Santa Fe Place Mall are just the beginning. Khalil is already in talks with UNM to sell inside the Student Union Building. And “just yesterday” he got a call from someone in Las Vegas, Nevada to install a vending machine in the high-end Premium Outlets Shopping Center. With a quick raise of his eyebrows, Khalil admits the chocolate biz is “very good” — and as some of his customers might say, “very sweet.”