North Texas pastry shop serves up viral Dubai chocolate bar
RICHARDSON – The viral 'Dubai chocolate bar' is all over TikTok, but curious minds don't have to travel across the globe to get their hands on one.
A North Texas Middle Eastern ice cream and pastry shop, BigDash, sells the sweet treat that has flooded social media.
"We receive like 100 calls every single day asking for it. 'Do you guys have it? Do you guys have it?'" Asmaa Khattab, founder and owner of BigDash, said.
Online pictures and videos across social media show that the outside of the bar is hand-painted with edible splatter marks, but the inside has viewers drooling. The filling is packed with pistachios and Knafeh, a Middle Eastern dessert made with sweet, buttery phyllo pastry strands.
It's gooey, creamy and crunchy loaded into one bite.
"Everybody's been asking for it. Everybody. And I mean everybody. Like, really. It's been crazy ever since," Khattab said.
In one week, the local pastry shop sells more than 5,000 bars and makes 700 to 800 of the bars daily, in addition to the dozens of other fresh homemade staples.
So, what's the secret?
"Pistachio cream, luxurious pistachio cream, and some Turkish pistachio." Khattab said they start with the filling, a shredded phyllo dough, that needs to be roasted in the oven with some butter.
And a key ingredient – "We do our twist to it, we do our own pistachio paste just to balance the flavor with the pistachio cream. So the pistachio cream is very unique and tastes very creamy and very sweet."
All the buzz around one chocolate bar has helped the business in more ways than one.
More people are starting to show interest in Middle Eastern desserts thanks to that chocolate bar that's become a global sensation.
Both owners, Khattab and Kareen Airefaai, are from Syria and turned their passion into a business in 2016 from home. They started making homemade products like Arabic ice cream, Knafeh and Baklava. Over time, the demand grew and they opened more locations.
BigDash has recently hired eight more employees across its four Dallas-Fort Worth locations due to the demand for products.
Khattab told CBS News Texas that they will be offering the 'Dubai Chocolate Bar' as long as they have the supplies. Although, there's becoming a shortage of ingredients as more people are trying to recreate the bar.
"Oh, everybody's short, and we got to a point where we need to do our pistachio cream, which is very time-consuming, very hard to do but we have to do it. I mean, we cannot cut our customers."
BigDash has locations in Irving, Richardson, Frisco and Garland.