Shelves in the Golden Nuts overflow with foil-wrapped candies in every color. Glass-encased displays feature dozens of versions of kunafa, baklava, flavored nuts and swirls of Turkish delight, like a rainbow of museum pieces you can eat.
Willy Wonka would feel right at home here.
A popular late-night spot during Ramadan for celebratory Middle Eastern and Turkish sweets, this less-than-year-old Columbia Heights shop was drawing long lines even before the Islamic holy month. That’s because the two cousins who started it, Ahmad Asmar and Mahmoud Rammouni, have a knack for predicting the latest TikTok food trend.
First up: the Dubai chocolate bar. A thick milk chocolate bar filled with a mixture of pistachio butter and fine threads of shredded phyllo, called kataifi, that was invented in a Dubai chocolate shop.
“It just went viral all over the world,” said Asmar one recent evening while a line snaked through the store, customers waiting for more plastic-shell containers of treats to hit the counter. Two chilled bars come to a container ($10), with pistachio cream drizzled in a zigzag across the top. Eat it with a fork, break into segments or just take a bite.
It’s the chocolate bar that “took over the world,” according to the New York Times.
Next came the Dubai strawberry cup ($11.99), which breaks the candy bar out of the mold and turns it into a parfait studded with fresh fruit. Here, too, the pistachio-coated bits of phyllo give a light and crispy little pop to every chocolaty bite.
The Golden Nuts also stocks Propitious Mango, a Chinese frozen dessert that enrobes smooth mango ice cream in a white chocolate shell. It, too, is internet-famous.
