Usually it’s my brother Jim who asks me about my favorite meals on a trip, and he might yet, but this time Lilly did first. I had to think about it. There were a good many good meals along the way, but the best was hard to pin down. As for my favorite food, I knew at once: Lazy Monkey Pistachio & Kunafa Chocolate, which I bought at Emirates Cooperative Society, a mid-sized Dubai grocery store near my hotel, where I sourced a number of meals.

Lazy Monkey is a product of the UAE, though using Belgian chocolate. One might think of oil and tourism when it comes to the UAE economy, and one would be right, but food processing is part of the mix.

As for the selection at the grocery store, UAE products were an important component, but I also saw or bought items from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kuwait, India and other Middle East or Indian Ocean places. The Lebanese bread in bags was soft and just chewy enough, and a good platform of peanut butter made in India and hummus made in Jordan. For its part, Saudi Arabia produces good chocolate too, some of which I tried, but carelessly didn’t make note of any names.

Anyway, Lazy Monkey was better. The chocolate itself was excellent, raised to wonderful by the generous pistachio filling, and then to extraordinary by the slightly crunchy texture. That might have been the pistachio, but there’s also the matter of kunafa, which I had to look up. There are many variations around the Middle East, with a basis of crispy dough, cheese and syrup.

Even better, Lazy Monkey is available only in the UAE, even if you order it on line – which, at 29 dirhams, is much more expensive than at the store – though the web site promises it will be exported to other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council before long. You can’t find it on Amazon, which has other kinds of UAE pistachio chocolate confections available at similarly high prices.

All that adds to Lazy Monkey’s after-the-trip appeal, the sort everyday exoticism that Ritter Sport had when it wasn’t sold in the United States, or for that matter, Ghirardelli had when it wasn’t available everywhere from Podunk Hollow to East Jesus.