When Giancarlo Fanigliulo opened Marrone, a cafe dedicated to tiramisu in London’s Soho in August, he hadn’t anticipated he would sell out within two and a half hours. “I was expecting a buzz, but I wasn’t expecting queues around the corner,” he tells me. “It was insane.”
This kind of excitement about the Italian dessert is not a one-off – we are, it seems, living in an age of tiramisu-mania. Nearly all of the high street coffee chains have offered some kind of tiramisu coffee as a seasonal special (in the US, Dunkin’ currently has four different tiramisu-flavoured drinks on its menu). Meanwhile, Haagen-Dazs and Carte D’or now sell tiramisu ice-cream, London chain Buns from Home offers a tiramisu-flavoured croissant-dough bun and social media is awash with tiramisu recipes and videos of “tiramisu drawers” – trays of the dessert ready to serve out of drawers in chefs’ kitchens – as popularised by the viral one at Manchester pasta restaurant Onda.
Marrone is not the first “just tiramisu” vendor to pop up in recent years: Sheffield’s Paradiso – which, along with classic tiramisu, will sell you a “latte-misù” (an iced coffee topped with a slab of tiramisu) – opened in 2023; while the TikTok viral Secret Layers, where you can buy the dessert from a tiny hatch in a wall, opened in Paddington, London, last year. In March, the Guinness World Record for the world’s longest tiramisu was broken when chefs assembled a 440.6 metre portion of the pudding (although there was some discussion, among my friends at least, about whether it should actually count as the longest, since it appeared to be a series of smaller portions of tiramisu joined together).
Supermarkets are also noticing an uptick in tiramisu purchases. “Sales of our own brand tiramisu range have grown by 5% over the last year, with our Tesco Finest Coffee & Amaretto Tiramisu Dessert, proving particularly popular, selling nearly 10% more,” says Peter Wood, Tesco’s category buying manager for desserts. M&S, which is currently stocking “creamy tiramisu brownies” and, at Easter, sold tiramisu hot cross buns, says tiramisu sales are up 27% compared with last year.
The tiramisu trend has reached weddings, too, sometimes as a replacement for a wedding cake. The dessert “is probably one of the main trends of 2026,” says Cotswolds-based wedding planner Oliver Stanton – when we speak, he has just finished working on a wedding where tiramisu featured. “A lot of couples are having tiramisu served in coupe glasses and arranged in a tower like you would with a champagne tower. It serves as an extra photo opportunity as well as dessert for the guests.”
Tiramisu has always been a beloved pudding, but Lisa Harris, co-founder of Harris and Hayes food and drink consultancy, can see why it is enjoying a spike in popularity at the moment: social media algorithms reward nostalgia and anything that symbolises decadence – and tiramisu does both: “A good tiramisu is actually an exercise of this balance of the coffee, the cream and the sponge. There’s sort of not that much to it,” says Harris. “And yet it’s also this shorthand for indulgence.”
The proliferation of tiramisu-flavoured products, she adds, is probably in part due to the word “tiramisu” itself: “It sort of says elegance without really needing to try too hard.” It’s also an easy way to describe a specific flavour profile: “I could say tiramisu latte, tiramisu cookie, tiramisu doughnut, and you would know that I mean it has got cream and coffee in it.”
The emergence of “Little Treat Culture” – the concept of giving yourself small rewards amid trying political and economic times – has also aided the success of tiramisu and tiramisu-flavoured products. At a time “when people are perhaps eating out less, in the current economic climate,” indulgence becomes more coveted. Someone “just thinking about what dessert they’re going to have” is a bigger deal, Harris says.
It was partly because tiramisu has become “such a culture” that Fanigliulo decided to open Marrone. The 30-year-old doesn’t have a background in hospitality – he previously worked in tech sales – but he was struck that “when you think of tiramisu, there’s never been a brand associated with it”. His family is Italian on his father’s side, and his tiramisu is inspired by his grandmother’s recipe. All three of the tiramisus on Marrone’s menu (original classic, dark chocolate and sea salt, and pistachio, each sold for £10 a pot) are light and glossy in style – as opposed to a block that retains its shape when cut into – which is how Fanigliulo prefers his tiramisu. He is hoping that Marrone will become a go-to spot for people after this style of tiramisu (which, I can confirm, is absolutely delicious).
Fanigliulo’s enthusiasm for good tiramisu is infectious, and reminds me that I do actually really love this beautiful, creamy, caffeine-and-booze-filled pudding. And I’m all for there being more places to get great tiramisu. But whenever I see a new modification of this beautiful dessert into yet another drink or snack, I can’t help but think we might be overdoing it a little. Perhaps it’s time to make it tirami-stop?
