How the world's most TikTok-famous nut ended up in your espresso bar
The short version: In 2021, a small Dubai chocolatier launched a pistachio-and-kadayif bar that quietly sold inside the United Arab Emirates. A TikTok creator made it viral in 2024. By January 6, 2026, Starbucks had built four pistachio drinks around the same flavour idea (Latte, Cortado, Cream Cold Brew, Frappuccino) and committed to keeping pistachio on the menu year-round. The pistachio drinks beverage segment is up 100 percent in four years, with a projected 164 percent growth by 2029. Specialty cafés are now reacting, with mixed enthusiasm.
A piece of trivia, to start. The most-consumed nut in 2026 specialty coffee did not come from a coffee origin. It did not come from a roaster's R&D lab. It came from a Dubai chocolate factory, by way of a single TikTok video, three years before Starbucks had even committed to it. The story of how pistachio ended up beside the espresso machine is, in many ways, more interesting than the drink itself. It tells us something about how flavour now moves through the global coffee economy, quickly, virally, sometimes ahead of the supply chain.
The Dubai bar that started everything
In 2021, an engineer named Sarah Hamouda, who lived in Dubai and was pregnant, asked her small dessert team for a chocolate bar that could cope with her cravings. Egyptian-British by background, Hamouda had co-founded Fix Dessert Chocolatier with Filipino pastry chef Nouel Catis Omamalin a year earlier. What came back from the kitchen was a thick milk-chocolate bar filled with chopped kadayif pastry (a Levantine cousin of shredded phyllo) and a sweet pistachio-tahini cream. They called the product the "Can't Get Knafeh of It" bar. It sold modestly through their own delivery channel for two and a half years.
Then came the TikTok moment. In late 2024, a Dubai-based creator posted a video cutting the bar open. The shot of the green pistachio cream flowing out over the crunch of the kadayif passed half a billion views inside ten weeks. Within a month, food retailers from Sydney to São Paulo were either trying to import the original or producing imitation versions. The category "Dubai chocolate" effectively did not exist in 2023. By the end of 2024, it was an aisle.
From bar to brew: the Starbucks 2026 winter menu
Starbucks does not chase fads, but it does monitor them. The chain reintroduced its Pistachio Latte on January 6, 2026, as part of its full winter menu rollout. That was not the news; the Pistachio Latte had appeared in earlier years. The news was the lineup beside it. The 2026 menu added an Iced Dubai Chocolate Mocha, a Dubai Chocolate Crème Frappuccino, and, most notably, a Pistachio Cortado, three ristretti of Blonde Espresso, steamed milk, sweet pistachio sauce, finished with a salted brown-buttery topping, served in an eight-ounce glass. A Pistachio Cream Cold Brew rounded out the pistachio collection. Officially, Starbucks announced that pistachio would now stay on its menu year-round rather than departing with the snow.
Read that decision carefully. Pistachio is no longer a winter holiday flavour for Starbucks. It is now a year-round commitment, treated like vanilla or caramel. That is a meaningful shift, and it depends on a supply chain that can deliver pistachio paste at industrial volumes, all year, without disruption.
The numbers behind the flavour
Pistachio is one of the few flavour categories where supply has matched marketing. The United States, Iran and Turkey produce roughly 85 percent of the world's pistachios. In California, where the bulk of the American crop grows in the San Joaquin Valley, the bearing acreage in 2026 is nearly seven times what it was in 2000. The American crop alone was forecast above 1.5 billion pounds in receipts during the 2025 cycle. The global pistachio market sits at around $5.5 billion in 2026 and is projected to grow to roughly $7 billion by 2031 at a compound annual rate of about 5 percent.
On the demand side, food analytics firm TasteWise tracks pistachio beverage consumption up 100 percent over four years, with a projected 164 percent growth by 2029. Pistachio beverages are now growing faster than matcha (which had its own moment in 2018 to 2020) and tiramisu (which has had a parallel cycle as a flavour profile). The supply side caught up first. That matters: if Starbucks had attempted a year-round pistachio commitment a decade ago, the supply chain would have buckled.
The specialty café response
Independent specialty cafés have been ambivalent. The flavour does not naturally pair with most specialty coffee philosophies, which prize transparency, single-origin clarity and minimal additions. Pistachio paste, particularly in syrup form, sits on the opposite end of that spectrum. Yet several specialty operators have engaged with the trend on their own terms. In Brussels, Caffelatte Espresso Bar serves a layered pistachio espresso poured in three visible bands of espresso, pistachio cream and milk. In Antwerp, smaller bars have flirted with pistachio cold foams over filter coffee. The line being drawn, by the more thoughtful operators, is between pure pistachio paste (which carries terroir, fat content and roasted notes) and industrial syrup (which is essentially a vehicle for sugar and artificial flavour).
Done right, the swavory category, that contraction of "sweet" and "savory" that has become the umbrella term for miso-caramel lattes, salted pistachio drinks, tahini espressos and other 2026 menu inventions, can sit naturally inside specialty's interest in unusual flavour pairings. Done lazily, it becomes the next cinnamon dolce: a drink that says nothing about the coffee underneath. The difference, in practice, is whether the bar is using a real ingredient or a marketing ingredient.
Frequently asked questions about pistachio coffee in 2026
Where did the pistachio coffee trend actually come from?
It traces back to a single chocolate bar. In 2021, Fix Dessert Chocolatier in Dubai, co-founded by Egyptian-British engineer Sarah Hamouda and Filipino chef Nouel Catis Omamalin, started selling a bar filled with chopped kadayif pastry and a pistachio-tahini cream. The bar circulated quietly until a TikTok creator went viral with it in 2024, after which the format was imitated worldwide. By January 6, 2026, Starbucks had built an entire winter menu around pistachio (Pistachio Latte, Pistachio Cortado, Pistachio Cream Cold Brew and Pistachio Frappuccino) and committed to keeping the flavour on the menu year-round.
What does the term swavory mean in coffee?
Swavory is a contraction of sweet and savory, used to describe drinks that balance traditional sweet flavours with salty, buttery, herbal or umami elements. In specialty coffee, the trend has produced miso-caramel lattes, salted pistachio drinks, tahini espressos and even spring onion latte experiments. The flavour logic borrows from kitchen pairings: pistachio, with its naturally lipidic and slightly saline profile, sits perfectly inside that swavory zone. The 2026 Starbucks Pistachio Cortado is a textbook example: a sweet pistachio sauce mounted against a salted brown-butter topping over Blonde Espresso ristretti.
How do you tell a real pistachio latte from a sweet syrup version?
Look for three things. First, the colour: a drink made with pure pistachio paste shows a dull olive or brownish-green tone, while a syrup-only version pushes toward a brighter, almost neon green. Second, the texture: pistachio paste delivers a heavier, almost custard-like body and a long roasted-nut finish, whereas a syrup leaves a flatter sweetness with an artificial almond aftertaste. Third, ask the barista about the sourcing, specialty cafés tend to name an origin (Sicilian Bronte, Iranian Damghan, Californian San Joaquin Valley) while industrial syrup versions stay silent on it. In Brussels, places like Caffelatte Espresso Bar already serve a layered pistachio espresso that gives a useful reference point for what the artisanal version should taste like.
Where to go next on expertcafe.be
If this story interests you, the broader 2026 coffee menu conversation is covered across the site. Our functional coffee, mushrooms and adaptogens piece explains how wellness flavours are colliding with classical specialty. The coffee mocktails article maps the parallel trend toward zero-proof, café-driven drinks. For broader context on how Belgian roasters and bars sit inside this moment, see our Belgian coffee scene 2026 explainer. Our full glossary defines every technical term used in this piece, from kadayif to swavory.