If you’ve ever lived in Marseille – where the habit of exaggeration is imbibed with mothers’ milk – you’ve heard about the sardine that blocked the port. But that’s nothing compared to the pistachio that took over the world.

In late 2023, Dubai chocolate, a new kind of chocolate bar filled with pistachio cream, tahini and crunchy, toasted phyllo pastry, went viral. Chocolate brands, bakeries and purveyors of fine foods were quick to jump on the trend. Coffee chains began offering pistachio chocolate drinks (iced Dubai-chocolate matcha, anyone?) and delectable pistachio bomboloni – soft donuts filled with pistachio cream – came back on the menu in Italian restaurants. Meanwhile, pâtissiers seized on the craze with spinoffs such as the pistachio and raspberry dessert by Montreal’s Farine & Cacao: yogurt mousse, raspberry confit and whipped pistachio ganache nestled atop a pistachio biscuit, crowned with fresh raspberries and pistachio praline.

The quietly elegant pistachio has always been around, of course. It’s the Ralph Lauren of food: understated, classic, refined. But it’s been elevated to the rank of haute couture at this point, complete with its own range of downmarket knockoffs. Even Hermès has surrendered to force majeure and launched a pistachio perfume, Un Jardin à Cythère, which is supposed to smell like a Greek island garden: olivewood, fresh pistachio, bleached grasses, cyan skies. Parfumiers from Kayali to Tom Ford have picked up on the trend, and you can recognize the cool people now by the lingering........

© The Spectator