In December 2023, a TikTok influencer called Maria Vehera opened a packet of \u2018Dubai chocolate\u2019 in her car and filmed herself eating it. Since then, 124.6 million people have watched her swallowing this pistachio-based gloop.<\/p>\n
Oh Maria, what have you done? A butterfly flaps its wings \u2013 or an influencer eats some chocolate \u2013 and soon people are setting their alarms for 5 a.m. to queue outside Lidl for the \u2018drop\u2019 of LIDL\u2019S OWN DUBAI CHOCOLATE.<\/p>\n
Guess what? M&S made one too (\u00a38.50). Morrisons then had the bright idea of creating a pistachio cream Easter egg. Waitrose\u2019s Dubai chocolate was so popular it had to ration it to two bars per person. Knock-off brands now feature at the counter of almost every news-agent in London. In St James\u2019s Park Tube station, I bought Bolci\u2019s \u2018Kadayif Chocolate with Pistachio\u2019 for \u00a37.50. It was cloying and made me thirsty. I looked at the ingredients. Ah, yes: sunflower lecithin and polyglycerol polyricinoleate. Just like Mama used to make it.<\/p>\n
The clich\u00e9 has it that when America sneezes, Britain catches a cold. London wanted to be New York, Canary Wharf tried to ape Wall Street, and Sloane Rangers started wearing Ralph Lauren. But what if the cold is now travelling east to west, from Dubai to Britain? Scores of young Brits are moving to Dubai. But, more unexpectedly, Dubai\u2019s culture is coming back at us. The chocolate is just the latest symptom. Today\u2019s young look at America and see \u2013 pick your disaster \u2013 chaos, economic meltdown, fascism, racism, mass deportation. Then they look at Dubai and see\u2026 oooh, pistachio!<\/p>\n
This is misguided, of course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In December 2023, a TikTok influencer called Maria Vehera opened a packet of \u2018Dubai chocolate\u2019 in her car…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,2721,393,4884,257,839,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-68992","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-dubai","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-london","13":"tag-middle-east","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114439490047280574","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}