Trying to buy a jar of El Mordjene in Paris since 2024 has been like looking for a needle in a haystack. But in Barbès, in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, known to be an Arab and specifically Algerian neighbourhood, The New Arab found one.
“We just received lots of them”, the shopkeeper in an alimentation générale shop rue Caplat, near Métro Barbès, told The New Arab in late July, “and they’re the cheapest in town, ten euros!”
He knows the product is banned in France, but demand remains strong. “I also have some jars of Nutella, but what people want is El Mordjene now,” he added, with a cheeky smile.
The neighbourhood is vibrant with cuisine and food delights from North Africa. A few streets away, in a shisha bar — a type of popular café where people smoke flavoured tobacco through water-pipes — on rue de Clignancourt, a large jar of El Mordjene is also proudly on display for the buyers of crepes.
The product, dubbed an Algerian ‘Nutella’ due to its more hazelnut, less chocolaty flavour, gained enormous popularity in 2023. Algerians living in France began bringing it back to Marseille, Paris, and their suburbs, where large communities of North Africans reside. The hazelnut spread became a favourite of some influencers on social media, and the sales multiplied.
But, victims of its hype, the spread was soon banned in France in September 2024, officially for food safety regulations. Customs explained that Algeria isn’t on the EU’s approved list for exporting dairy-containing products. Yet the spread uses powdered milk itself mostly sourced from EU countries.
Other European countries soon followed, banning it, like Luxembourg. Despite the ban, shipments continued to arrive for months and were subsequently seized.
In early 2025, seizures continued in Paris suburbs like Argenteuil, and in May, French customs intercepted nine tonnes in Marseille, hidden in 15,300 jars. Prices rose from €15 to €25 per jar, sometimes higher depending on scarcity and location.
Delight of pride
For Rachida Lamri, founder of the Algerian Arts & Culture festival in the UK, DZ Fest (the third edition is scheduled for 14-27 September 2025), it has become so popular, first of all, “because the taste is great!” she told The New Arab.
“The taste is incredible. It's really, really, really delicious. Creamy, gorgeous, a really beautiful taste and very Moorish,” Rachida added.
“So, it's not just a hype around this thing, or Algerians making noise about something that's theirs with their overzealous pride. It’s actually a really good product.”
Rachida became aware of it via social media. “It became a challenge to find some, especially after the ban,” she said.
“It was like saying, ‘we are still going to exist and be part of the dialogue, whether with a flag, with a breakfast spread or with a song. We're still going to be there. This is Algerians talking. So if you try to ban us, we're going to make every effort to be there.”
As she travels regularly to Algeria, she can easily bring a few jars when she returns. “I also bring some for my friends now, as they ask for it. And not only my North African friends, my English friends too.”
The origin of El Mordjene in France is initially its consumption by the Franco-Algerian diaspora.
“It’s a spread that I was already consuming when I was in Algeria, when I went there on holiday, because over there, it’s been talked about a lot for a few years,” influencer and producer of the podcast Allo 213 on Algerian-French relations, Donia Ismail, told The New Arab.
“The version we know — the so-called ‘Kinder Bueno’ version, the white one — has existed since 2021, but in very small quantities. It was sold in Egypt and Algeria. It took off in 2024. By then, you could find it in Paris, for example, in Barbès, the heart of the Algerian community.”
The Algerian diaspora is the largest on French soil. We don’t have precise figures because, of course, ethnic studies are prohibited in France, but it’s a fact that it is the biggest foreign diaspora.
This means that everything that exists in Algeria arrives in small quantities in France, primarily reaching Paris, and especially Barbès. She said that as early as 2021, jars of El Mordjene could be found in Barbès.
“Someone started a trend around it, tasting it for the first time. It’s probably a Parisian or at least someone living in France. They tasted it and realised it had a similar flavour to Kinder Bueno. What’s really sought after is that hazelnut centre — the melting core," Donia explained.
"And it became a trend that spread all over France, with many influencers, TikTokers and Instagrammers joining in. It even went beyond France’s borders. You could find some in the United States, in Italy, Europe in general, and in other Arab countries — basically wherever Algerians manage to bring in El Mordjene with them.”
Farah Keram, a culinary writer living between France and North Africa, author of Cuisines d’Afrique du Nord (North African Cuisines), told The New Arab that it corresponds to the whole imagination surrounding dual identity, through the memory of taste.
“El Mordjene has become an iconic product in Algeria, even though it’s not that old. It's not like the fizzy drink Selecto, for instance, which has long been part of Algerian pop culture – somewhere between a Coca-Cola imitation and a national staple. El Mordjene responded to a craving for sweetness in Algeria – especially for hazelnut, a flavour that is hugely popular there,” Farah told The New Arab.
And while, for decades, people took in their suitcases products from France to Algeria, in this case, it’s the opposite; it’s an Algerian taste making its way to France, she added.
"It’s a purely Algerian product,” she explained, “and it’s heartening to see items from our countries – and more broadly from outside the Western world – gaining visibility. Products that aren’t rooted in the so-called Western canon, yet are becoming desirable and part of new narratives.”
Social media played a key role in this dynamic, especially through food influencers, culinary blogs, videos where North African women were doing the cooking, and similar trends.
An Algerian success story
The El Mordjene spread is produced by a company named Cebon, based in Algeria. Founded in the 1970s, based in Tipaza, 40 miles west of Algiers, they also manufacture bread, chocolates and biscuits.
“For a long time, no one reacted to their products beyond the local consumption, Donia retells, “and now that it has become a flagship product, to the point that competitors in Europe are imposing restrictions — in fact, a ban,” she adds.
The ban has even become a very controversial issue for some people in Algeria. It’s debated across different layers of society, not just among young people.
Amine Ouzlifi, Cebon’s spokesman, told the press he thought the EU was looking for a loophole. “They considered a bunch of options and finally settled on dairy products as the most viable. Although El Mordjene had been available in France for years, it was not a problem. However, when it gained popularity, it was blocked.”
The Algerian Organisation for the Protection of Consumers and the Environment said that the French decision was abusive and that it felt it came out of nowhere.
These sentiments are widely shared on social media, according to Donia, especially in Algeria, where “many say the ban is because authorities simply don’t want it to be an Algerian product,” she told The New Arab. “The EU would rather have exclusivity over such a product.”
Freedom for the Southern side of the Mediterranean
According to Farah Keram, what the story of El Mordjene’s ban also tells is a reflection of a dislike, to say the least, of anything Algerian in France.
For her book, she studied the history of wheat production in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, and olive trees in Tunisia. These products shed light on the import-export dynamics between the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean.
“It highlighted the double standards within the European Union,” Farah said.
“Here in France, for instance, frozen chicken is exported at very low prices to sub-Saharan and West Africa, which, beyond raising serious public health concerns, has also undermined all the local supply chains," she added.
"France, Spain, Greece, and especially Italy buy bulk olives from Tunisia at very low prices. These are then processed into olive oil and packaged in Italy. And there is no traceability whatsoever, no mention of the Tunisian origin of the olives, and the product is simply labelled as 'Made in Italy’… And it is the same for anchovies and other fish.”
Farah says she has done intensive research on this for her own book, which is a great success so far, and that this was not reported before.
Meanwhile, products imported from Africa are under scrutiny. El Mordjene is thus a victim of this long post-colonial habit, according to the writer.
It is also paying for the current high diplomatic tensions between Emmanuel Macron’s government in France and Abdelmadjid Tebboune in Algeria, especially since Macron decided to express his public support to Morocco in July 2024 for his plan to keep Western Sahara within its borders, while Algeria supports the call of Sahrawis for a referendum on self-determination.
"We all know tensions are running high between Paris and Algiers, and that there's still a deep wound from the colonial period — but especially the postcolonial tensions,” Farah said.
To Farah, there’s a refusal in France and Europe to accept that this particular spread could be on the same level as Ferrero’s.
“And this really reactivates the issue of cultural appropriation and, more broadly, of erasure,” she concluded. “It is about the erasure of a cultural richness, which includes food.”
That’s why, for Rachida, it is now obvious that El Mordjene will be featured in the food events of her DZ Fest.
“We can call it ‘the cultural resistance of Algerians’, since it is a form of resistance,” she told The New Arab.
"They're trying to silence us. So we're going to be more vocal about it. It's a contribution to a collective effort to bring Algeria into the mainstream. So any article, any song, any event helps.”
Melissa Chemam is a French Algerian freelance journalist and culture writer based between Paris, Bristol and Marseille, and travelling beyond
Follow her on X: @melissachemam