Review: Crumbl, Dubai Chocolate Cheesecake

$7.87 ($4.88 base charge + $2.99 upcharge)

I’ve enjoyed Cumbl’s foray into non-cookie desserts. And I’ve also had fun taking joyrides on the Dubai Chocolate hype-train. This dessert was described as a chocolate cheesecake on a chocolate graham crust. Topped with pistachio filling and kataifi (shredded phyllo dough).

First-bite impression, I got a lot of crunch from the kataifi and strong tangy notes from the cheescake filling. That’s it. I wondered if the pistachio and chocolate were somehow canceling each other out. A couple bites in - I detected a subtle, background chocolate flavor but the primary tasting experience was one of crunch, tang, sweet, and rich. The kataifi completely sniped the graham crust, I could not taste it all.

So if I didn’t know ahead of time what kind of cheesecake I was eating, I would have just assumed this was crunchy chocolate cheesecake. In search of pistachio, I had a few bites of just the pistachio filling. Nope. There was so much kataifi in it. That’s all I could taste. Dare I say, it almost reminded me a little bit of shredded wheat.   

I think Crumbl did a solid cheesecake. Pistachio was the learning curve and I think that’s true for the American sweets scene overall. We certainly live in a peanut butter-centric dessert world. Pistachio has proven to be a different beast than peanut. This has been the issue with most of the Dubai Chocolate items I have tried. The pistachio flavor was mild to non-existent. Though I’ll say that this was the first time the kataifi reminded me of cereal. I’ve really enjoyed the textural contrast the kataifi provided in other Dubai chocolate iterations. I wonder if, in their prep/baking process, the kataifi was not given an opportunity to absorb other flavors. So you just get left with the dough which was made of flour which consisted of ground wheat. This was the first Dubai Chocolate cheesecake I’ve tried. I hope Crumbl and other bakeries will continue to play around with the concept. It had a lot of delicious potential. I’d love to see a pistachio cheesecake with a kataifi crust, topped with chocolate mousse.

Glad I tried it: Yes

Would I buy it again: No, I don’t want to pay an extra $2.99 for cheesecake (even a good cheesecake) topped with crunchy ground wheat