Kunafa chocolate is a chocolate bar filled with thin, toasted strands of kunafa pastry mixed into a nut butter or cream filling, giving it a distinct crunch that regular chocolate doesn't have. It's the format behind the viral "Dubai chocolate" trend that took over social media, and it's built entirely around one thing: texture.
If you've seen it all over your feed and aren't quite sure what you're actually biting into, here's the breakdown.
Kunafa chocolate is built in layers: a chocolate shell on the outside, then a filling of nut butter or cream mixed with kadayif, thin shredded pastry strands that are toasted before being folded in. The toasting is what gives it that crackly, almost caramelized crunch instead of going soft or soggy inside the chocolate.
Kunafa itself isn't new. It's a traditional Middle Eastern dessert, usually made with the same shredded pastry soaked in sugar syrup and layered with cheese or cream. What's new is putting that pastry, toasted and dry rather than syrup-soaked, inside a chocolate bar. That combination is what people mean when they say "kunafa chocolate" or "Dubai chocolate" online.
The trend traces back to a chocolatier in Dubai who combined pistachio cream and toasted kunafa inside a thick chocolate shell, and a video of someone eating it went viral in late 2023 into 2024. From there it spread fast, first as a hard-to-find specialty item, then as something chocolate makers worldwide started making their own versions of.
What kept it going past a single viral moment is that the format actually delivers something different. Most chocolate bars are one texture start to finish. Kunafa chocolate isn't, and that contrast is genuinely more interesting to eat.
The crunch comes from toasting the kunafa pastry before it goes into the filling, which dries it out and gives it a light, brittle texture close to a very thin wafer or filo pastry. Once it's folded into pistachio cream or another nut butter and sealed inside chocolate, that texture holds instead of going soft, since it's not sitting in moisture the way syrup-soaked kunafa is.
That's the whole appeal in one sentence: it's the only chocolate format where you get a genuine crunch layer built into the bar itself, not sprinkled on top.
We build ours around the same toasted kunafa and premium chocolate shell as the format calls for, but we pair it with our own dates rather than treating it as a separate category from what we already do. It's less "we made a trendy chocolate bar" and more "we applied the trend to what we already know."
Right now we make it in four flavors: Ajwa Kunafa Pistachio Cream, which uses natural pistachio cream without artificial coloring, Lotus Biscoff Kunafa Chocolate, Peanut Butter Kunafa, and Salted Caramel Kunafa Chocolate. All four run 144g bars at Rs. 999.
If you're new to the format and not sure which filling to start with, pistachio is the closest to the original viral version, while Biscoff and salted caramel lean sweeter and peanut butter is the richer, nuttier option.
No, they're built differently. Chocolate-covered dates are a whole date dipped or coated in chocolate, so the texture is soft and chewy throughout. Kunafa chocolate is a molded bar with the crunchy pastry filling inside, and in our case, it's built around dates as an ingredient in the filling rather than the whole piece being a date.
They're both worth trying for different reasons, and if you want the deeper comparison between the two formats, that's genuinely a separate question worth answering on its own.
Kunafa chocolate holds its crunch best in a cool, dry place, away from direct heat or humidity, which can soften the pastry inside the shell over time. Refrigeration works for longer storage, but let it come back closer to room temperature for a few minutes before eating so the chocolate shell isn't rock hard.
It's meant to be eaten in a few bites rather than melted into something else. Slicing or biting straight through the shell is where you actually get the layered crunch, which is the whole point of the format.
Kunafa chocolate isn't a passing gimmick so much as a genuinely different way to eat chocolate, one that layers in a crunch most chocolate bars simply don't have. If you've only seen it on video, the format is worth trying once to understand why it caught on the way it did.
Curious to try it? Browse our full Kunafa Chocolate collection and pick a flavor to start with.
Yes, "kunafa chocolate" and "Dubai chocolate" refer to the same viral format, chocolate filled with toasted kunafa pastry and nut butter or cream. Dubai chocolate is just the name that stuck after the trend went viral in late 2023.
It combines rich chocolate and creamy nut butter or pistachio filling with a crunchy, slightly toasted pastry texture running through the center. The flavor depends on the filling, pistachio is nutty and mild, while options like Biscoff or salted caramel are sweeter.
Keep it in a cool, dry place away from heat and humidity to preserve the crunch. Refrigeration works for longer storage, just let it sit a few minutes at room temperature before eating.
Yes, our kunafa chocolate is built around our own dates as part of the filling, rather than treating it as a separate product line from what we already make.