The reasons for the pistachio obsession

You've probably found it in every pastry shop, bakery, and café's display case. Croissants, Neapolitan pastries, Berliners, waffles, crepes, panettone, and coca pastries, filled and covered with an excessively creamy, creamy, and syrupy cream that's sometimes a radioactive green that could glow in the dark, but other times a more golden and luxurious pastel emerald.

It also appears frequently on your phone; perhaps in the video of a coulant being broken with a spoon, allowing the lustful spillage of that freshly melted gold to flow out, making you want, need, to lick the screen and enter that reality right now, right now, with your tongue.

Suddenly you imagine a Willy Wonka -style fantasy, with a waterfall of stagnant, swampy water that is pistachio, pistachio cream, in which you can bathe, tilt your head back, close your eyes and open your mouth, overflowing with that sauce that drips and splashes like paint on your lips, cheeks and chin.

“Eighty percent of food perception is visual,” says Elena Romeo, a doctor in gastronomic sciences and sensory analysis from the Basque Culinary Center. According to her, the vibrant, warm, and bright green of pistachios, along with the crunchiness of the nut and the density of its cream, activates reward channels and generates anticipatory pleasure, especially when paired with sweets.

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That's why you get that enveloping sensation in your mouth, as if watching it on screen, you could already feel and taste it, with the excitement of your salivary glands and the frozen state of your thumb until the end of the video, even if it lasts much longer than 30—or 15, or 10, or 5—seconds. Like . Share. Save.

“Images are also carefully curated on social media,” Romeo observes, adding that marketing knows what kinds of colors, textures, and stories can have the greatest reach. Pistachio cream, the prodigal child of food porn , began going viral about six years ago thanks to videos of tourists marveling at a cornetto filled with this green alternative to Nutella, something that was already quite common in Italy.

And anticipation has a lot of power, according to the expert: seeing something appetizing that isn't available generates more desire, like in the early days of Dubai chocolate, which combined the already familiar green paste with the novel crunch of filo pastry strands to fill an always-appealing chocolate bar with unprecedented abundance.

The algorithm was insistent on the amplified image and sound of someone opening it to reveal its ostentatious and obscene interior, then immediately taking a bold bite— crunch —opening their eyes and dilating their pupils and chewing it— crunch crunch —ending up running their tongue, cat-like, along a crack as irregular as it was irreparable. Again: like , share, save.

When Dubai chocolate left Dubai and artisan bakeries and industrial brands replicated the recipe and expanded it to ice cream, puff pastries, and cakes, it was so successful that, as the Financial Times reported in April of this year, the global supply of the nut was virtually exhausted.

“We often get new clients, and we have to say we have nothing left and that we have to wait until the September harvest,” says Joan Altet, CEO of Foment Agrícola Les Garrigues, a nut manufacturer in Lleida, the leading pistachio producer in Catalonia, which has grown from 400 to 1,000 hectares of pistachio crops since 2018.

Spain produced 5,000 tons of pistachios in 2024. The United States and Iran produced 583,000 and 220,000 tons, respectively.

Castilla-La Mancha and Andalusia account for most of Spain's remaining 79,000 hectares, which have increased their surface area by 3,000% in 10 years. Many of these crops have been developed in areas with low olive and almond production or have replaced cereal plantations .

Altet clarifies that local production is still in its infancy, with many young pistachio trees bearing fruit within five years: “Furthermore, although 2025 is expected to be good, the last two harvests have been poor, due to frost and drought.”

Foment Agrícola Les Garrigues produces a range of pistachio products, which it sells primarily to businesses in Catalonia: toasted pistachios, used as a crunchy topping for pizzas, hamburgers, and salads; whole pistachios, caramelized or chocolate-coated; and the highly successful pure pistachio paste, used in cooking, pastry making, and ice cream making.

Expectation vs. Reality

A couple of Sunday afternoons ago, in line at the Delacrem ice cream parlor, a middle-aged tourist couple with Colombian accents were arguing about which flavor to order. They talked about chocolate, vanilla, and pistachio. The man commented that he didn't like pistachio before, and that he thought he never had since he was a child, because he preferred mint chocolate, or strawberry, although perhaps, he thought, it was because he'd never seen or tasted a good one, until he traveled to Italy and encountered that golden green instead of fluorescent, which prompted him to try it and from that time on, he said, to always repeat it.

“Fashion products often generate so many expectations that when you try them, you can be deeply disappointed,” warns Elena Romeo.

But the pistachio seems to live up to its visual appeal: “It's the best-seller in our stores… it always has been, since we opened in 2010,” reveals Massimo Pignata of Delacrem, who attributes its success to the nut's toasted and salty notes. It's also the best-seller at Cloud, the second-best seller at La Valenciana, and the third-best seller at Dellahostia and Morreig, some of Barcelona's most popular artisan ice cream shops.

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“It's been growing for the past five years, but the most significant growth has happened in the last two,” says Ana Cortés of La Valenciana. “Ice cream, Dubai popsicles, pastries… anything with pistachios is a sure sell,” adds Alba Ruíz of the Morreig bakery and ice cream parlor.

Passing fad or established trend?

According to Elena Romeo, pistachios are still perceived as a novelty, usually associated with Italy or the Middle East and a rather premium category. "Its future is uncertain if it continues to become widespread," she suggests.

Joan Altet observes that, while the explosion of chocolate in Dubai has occurred in the last year, consumption of this nut has been increasing for more than five years. His prediction is that, just as before there was only a regular croissant, and over time, chocolate croissants became established as a staple product everywhere, the same could happen with pistachio croissants.

"We have a growing European industry that can eventually replace imports of a product that will continue to be eaten and perceived, increasingly, as Mediterranean," he concludes.