Dubai Doubt

I keep seeing these jars of Dubai chocolate spreading across British supermarkets like an outbreak of aspirational beige. One minute it was a niche confection invented by a Dubai chocolatier with a pun for a product name, the next it was everywhere from Aldi to the darker corners of TikTok, pushed by influencers who seem to think pistachio goo and a bit of fried pastry constitute the height of civilisation.

And now we learn, courtesy of Europe’s food inspectors, that the whole craze is less culinary enlightenment and more a reminder that humanity will buy anything if you attach the word Dubai to it. Half the stuff isn’t even made in Dubai. Some of it hails from Turkey, some from factories of indeterminate location, and a few bars appear to have been assembled in conditions that make a 1970s sweet shop look like a sterile surgical theatre. A court in Cologne has already ruled: if it says Dubai on the wrapper, it really ought to have been within shouting distance of Dubai at some point. Radical, I know.

Meanwhile in Britain the FSA has had to issue alerts because certain imports forget to mention what’s actually in them. Allergens? Optional. Peanuts? Surprise. Aflatoxin? Just a little sprinkling to spice up your day. Some bars barely qualify as chocolate under EU definitions, being more a cheerful blend of random fats held together by the marketing equivalent of Sellotape.

And yet the punters queue. They film themselves biting into the things as if they’re unwrapping a rare treasure from Tutankhamun’s tomb. They swoon over the green pistachio ooze as though it’s the nectar of the gods rather than a substance that, according to German lab tests, sometimes contains more contaminants than the Somerset Levels after a winter flood.

What fascinates me is that the real secret ingredient is not pistachio or chocolate at all. It’s branding. Dubai has become shorthand for shiny excess, so the name is slapped on anything sweet in the hope that shoppers will imagine they are sampling a luxury desert delicacy rather than an industrial pastry tube dipped in middling chocolate. If someone launched Dubai Brussels Sprouts, they would probably sell out by Friday.

And here we are, soberly warned by regulators that some of these bars are dodgy enough to deserve their own crime number, while the craze rolls on regardless. It is the perfect modern parable: take a perfectly ordinary idea, add imported glamour, inflate demand through influencers, then watch Europe’s courts and food watchdogs sprint to keep up.

As for those jars in the supermarket, I suspect the only genuinely Dubai-related thing about them is the price. If you fancy something authentically Middle Eastern, try making proper knafeh. If you want a jar of pistachio-flavoured risk, by all means stick with the Dubai chocolate fad.

But don’t say the FSA didn’t warn you.