If you’ve been on social media, you may have noticed Dubai Chocolate taking it by storm. Although exclusive to Dubai, there are variations of the chocolate in the United States. Because it’s rich in milk chocolate stuffed with pistachios and knafeh (crispy shredded phyllo pastry), it became a viral sensation last year.
As a result, people have been swarming stores and online retailers to get their hands on the confection. Places like IHOP and Shake Shack caught onto the trend, temporarily creating Dubai Chocolate-inspired menu items. Now, Crumbl Cookies has jumped on the bandwagon by releasing its Dubai Chocolate brownie, which ended up being a disappointing birthday dessert for this woman.
Opening a box of sadness
In a photo slideshow with 1.9 million views, TikTok creator Lily Unruh (@lilunruh96) reveals what she assumed the brownie would look like: a square-shaped dessert neatly topped with a layer of light chocolate frosting and pistachio drizzle from Crumbl’s website.
Indeed, her brownie does have the same shape, but that is where the similarities end. Instead, the content creator unveils what appears to be an undercooked brownie in the second slide. The melted brownie is sloppily covered in clumpy pistachio filling, which resembles oatmeal, and topped with small warm chocolate at the corner.
Needless to say, it didn’t meet her expectations.
“They really did me dirty,” Unruh writes in the text overlay in the third photo. In it, she is holding the cookie in a small white tin, her lips pulled inwards and eyebrows pinched, as if on the verge of tears.
Unruh continues to vent her disenchantment in the caption, “@Crumbl really did me dirty with the new #dubaichocolatebrownie. I am so sad and my birthday treat at that. Please do better.”
Viewers shared their thoughts
Many concurred that Unruh’s Crumbl location bamboozled her.
“They played you,” one viewer remarked.
“I hope you took it right back because that’s awful,” another commented.
“Looks like a cat box brownie,” a third stated.
Confused, some had more questions than answers.
“Did they not open the box to show you first?” one commenter asked.
“Y’all crumbl doesn’t show you your order?” another echoed.
What did the Crumbl customer do?
“So, basically what happened was I went in and they were extremely busy. There were two workers, probably 30 people waiting,” she says in a follow-up video. “They were very overwhelmed.”
While she was in line, she says she saw a customer in front of her. Their reaction to the Dubai Chocolate Brownie should’ve been a warning.
“They looked at it and I [saw] their face. They kind of laughed, closed the box, and walked out,” she recalls. After the worker handed the content creator her brownie, she says he disappeared.
“They opened the box in front of me but he pushed it in front of me and then walked away,” she says.
Although she thought the cookie “didn’t look right,” she says she still left with it.
“I should have probably went in and returned it or exchanged it but I just figured I would deal with it,” Uhruh explains. “I don’t know what happened but I wasn’t gonna go back in there, overwhelm them, and make a complaint.”
How did it taste?
During an interview with The Mary Sue, Uruh shared that this happened at the Duluth, Minnesota, store. Despite noticing the disfigured brownie instantly, the store’s hecticness prevented her from mentioning anything.
“I noticed it right away, however, they were extremely busy,” she revealed via TikTok comment.
To make matters worse, the brownie tasted just as terrible.
“It did not taste very good. It was raw and tasted kind of like peanut butter,” she said.
Fortunately, Crumbl compensated her for it.
“Crumbl gave me 2 free cookies,” the content creator shared. “I will go back.”
The Mary Sue reached out to Crumbl Cookies via press email.
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