Dubai Chewy Cookie, Pizza & Soju: Every Spinoff
Dubai Chocolate Pizza, Korea's Chewy Cookie & Every Weird Spinoff Format, Explained
From a chocolate bar to a marshmallow-wrapped cookie selling 1.8 million units in Korea, to soju, to pizza — how far this flavor profile has actually traveled, and why.
Why we're tracking this so closely: FIX Dessert Chocolatier created the original pistachio-kataifi chocolate bar concept in 2021. Watching that specific flavor and texture combination spawn an entirely separate, enormous food trend on the other side of the world — with its own celebrity moments, supply shocks, and corporate tie-ins — is one of the more remarkable things we've witnessed as the people who started it.
The Dubai chocolate bar didn't just inspire copycats. It seeded an entirely new branch of food trends, each taking the core pistachio-and-kataifi flavor signature and translating it into a format nobody would have predicted from the original chocolate bar. The most dramatic example by far is happening in South Korea right now — a marshmallow-wrapped "chewy cookie" trend so large it has measurably moved local pistachio prices. This guide covers every major spinoff format, what's actually in each one, and why some have outgrown the original trend that inspired them.
The Dubai Chewy Cookie: Korea's "Dujjonku"
The single biggest spinoff of the entire Dubai chocolate phenomenon is happening in South Korea. The "Dubai chewy cookie," commonly shortened to "dujjonku" (두바이 쫀득 쿠키), takes the exact same core filling — pistachio cream blended with pan-fried kataifi — and wraps it in melted chocolate marshmallow instead of a tempered chocolate shell, finished with a dusting of cocoa powder. Despite being called a "cookie," its texture is closer to a chewy rice cake with a crisp outer shell than to anything resembling a Western cookie.
The format was originally developed by Mond Cookie's Lee Yoonmin and pastry chef Kim Nari in April 2025. It stayed relatively under the radar until September 2025, when K-pop idol Jang Wonyoung (of the group IVE) posted it on her Instagram story — a single celebrity moment that's widely credited with launching the trend into mainstream visibility.
"One Instagram story from one K-pop idol, and a niche cafe item became a national phenomenon within months. That's the speed Korean food trends move at when the format is genuinely shareable."
How Big This Actually Got, By the Numbers
First Korean versions of Dubai chocolate-inspired desserts appear in independent cafes in trend-forward neighborhoods like Seongsu-dong and Hongdae, priced between ₩5,500 and ₩8,000.
Mond Cookie's Lee Yoonmin and pastry chef Kim Nari develop the specific marshmallow-wrapped chewy cookie format that becomes the defining version of this spinoff.
IVE's Jang Wonyoung shares the cookie on her Instagram story, triggering a sharp surge in public attention and demand.
Convenience store chain CU reports over 1.8 million cookies sold. Between late December 2025 and late January 2026 alone, 82 separate "Dubai dessert" products were registered as new items with Korea's Ministry of Food and Drug Safety.
- Specialty cafe versions: ₩5,500–₩8,000 (roughly $4–$6 USD)
- Convenience store versions (CU, GS25): around ₩3,500 (roughly $2.50 USD)
- Premium department store versions (Lotte, Shinsegae food halls): ₩9,000+ (roughly $7+ USD)
- A dedicated app reportedly emerged just to track real-time stock and availability across retail locations nationwide — a level of consumer tracking infrastructure rarely seen even for major food trends
- A 1-kilogram bag of pistachios in Korea reportedly jumped 400% in price in a single month, from roughly ₩20,000 to ₩80,000, between December 2025 and mid-January 2026
The Variations: Tart, Roll, Bingsu & More
As is typical with Korean food trend cycles, mass-market adoption quickly triggered a wave of format variations, each major retailer racing to differentiate rather than simply copy the original chewy cookie.
| Format | Who Launched It | What It Is |
|---|---|---|
| Dubai Chewy Ball | Paris Baguette | A rounder, ball-shaped take on the original chewy cookie, drawing 50+ person queues at flagship stores |
| Dubai Chewy Tart | Paris Baguette | The same filling adapted into a tart format with a crisp pastry base |
| Dubai Chewy Roll | Starbucks Korea | A rolled pastry interpretation, released at select stores |
| Dubai-Themed Shaved Ice (Bingsu) | Sulbing | Saw a 42% sales increase in December 2025 versus the prior month, despite being the off-season for shaved ice |
| Giant Sharing Cookie (400g+) | Independent cafes | An oversized version designed specifically for group sharing and visual impact in short-form video content |
The Format That Started All of This
Before the cookie, the bingsu, the soju — there was one bar. Taste where the entire trend actually began.
Shop the Original FIX Bars →Beyond the Cookie: Soju, Pizza & Other Unexpected Formats
Perhaps the clearest sign of just how far this trend has traveled from its original chocolate bar form: HiteJinro, a major Korean soju maker, announced a limited-edition Dubai chewy cookie-flavored soju in February 2026, designed to deliver the dessert's chocolate and pistachio flavor notes in alcoholic form. It launched in university towns and major commercial districts in early March 2026 — a genuinely unusual crossover from dessert trend into the alcoholic beverage aisle.
Separately from the Korean chewy cookie wave, "Dubai chocolate pizza" has emerged as its own distinct variant — a sweet pizza format featuring a stuffed crust filled with the pistachio-kataifi chocolate mixture, and/or topped with it. This format treats Dubai chocolate as a dessert pizza ingredient rather than reinventing the eating format the way the Korean cookie trend did, more similar in spirit to how Nutella or s'mores have previously been adapted into pizza-format desserts.
- Industry observers caution that Korean food trends — citing prior examples like tanghulu (candied fruit skewers) — can fade quickly once novelty wears off.
- One academic quoted in coverage noted that staying power for this specific trend will depend on "maintaining flavor and quality while bringing prices down" as the category matures.
- The dramatic, localized pistachio price spike in Korea adds real cost pressure that could squeeze quality at the lower end of the market, similar to dynamics playing out globally in the broader pistachio supply chain.
Why This Flavor Profile Travels So Well Across Formats
It's worth asking why this specific flavor and texture combination — pistachio cream plus crisp kataifi — has proven so adaptable across wildly different formats, from a sealed chocolate bar to a marshmallow-wrapped cookie to a beverage. A few structural reasons stand out:
- The core textural contrast is format-agnostic. Creamy-meets-crunchy works whether it's sealed in chocolate, wrapped in marshmallow, or layered into a tart — the underlying sensory appeal doesn't depend on any single delivery format.
- The visual "pull-apart" reveal transfers directly. Whether it's a chocolate bar cracking open or a marshmallow cookie being pulled apart, the green pistachio filling reveal is the consistent visual hook driving short-form video content across every format.
- Local food cultures already had compatible formats waiting. Korea's existing chewy, mochi-adjacent dessert culture made the chewy cookie format a near-perfect local adaptation rather than a forced fit — the trend succeeded by merging with something the market already wanted, not fighting against local taste preferences.
Frequently Asked Questions
One Original Bar. A World of Spinoffs.
From the source: FIX created the pistachio-kataifi chocolate format in 2021 — the same flavor profile now reinvented across formats worldwide.
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