Crumbl Cookies review #98 - Dubai Chocolate Brownie

Crumbl Cookies review #98: Dubai Chocolate Brownie - visited August 22, 2025

I have not jumped on the Dubai Chocolate craze. I started seeing it everywhere in every form of baked good/dessert and even drinks and while normally I would be curious and try it, I saw it so often from multiple places that I figured it was just hype and another fad. The contrarian in me was like "nah, what's the fuss?"

Apparently I'm in the minority on this one as it took me three tries to find it in stock at my local Crumbl. The first time I went into the store, it was sold out on the first day. After that, I learned to check the status on the Crumbl app before I bothered to go to the store again. I finally chanced upon it "in stock" yesterday morning when I was out getting a jump start on my errands.

This had a couple of strikes going in. Beyond the fad/hype/craze that my contrarian self wasn't crazy about, this had an upcharge of $2.99, the highest I've seen so far on a Crumbl dessert . The total came to $8.10 at my store, a bit expensive for a brownie. Plus the nutrition info clocked this at over 1,000 calories. That's just crazy-town, even for Crumbl. And if you can tell from the picture of the brownie in the box, it wasn't like it overflowed the box either in terms of size.

I had no idea what kataifi was but figured that and the pistachio qualified it for the "Dubai" moniker as that seemed to be the common theme for all things "Dubai chocolate".

To cut to the chase, I ended up liking this brownie. The brownie itself wasn't as cloyingly rich as other Crumbl brownies I've tried but it was still rich enough. What made the brownie for me was the crunch from the kataifi. It was reminiscent of feuilletine, which I love, but a bit straw-ish seeming because of its shape. I didn't really taste the pistachio though, just chocolate and the crunch. The milk chocolate layer on top was good but even the drizzle of pistachio cream didn't taste of pistachio,

Do I think it was worth the $2.99 upcharge? Not really. Is it worth 1,010 calories? Also not really. I ate about a fifth of it and walked on the treadmill for an hour (hey, the new season of Wednesday on Netflix was a good way to pass that time) to offset those calories. It was delicious and I enjoyed it but if anything Dubai Chocolate is more expensive and contains that many calories, I'll probably let this fad pass me by.