Nocioni, Garcia, Garbanzo

In a recent post, The Hummus Blog quotes Israeli player Omri Casspi, now of the Sacramento Kings, lamenting the lack of authentic hummus found in US grocery stores. There are not many restaurants or fast-food establishments in the U.S. serving explicitly "Israeli" food; Sacramento appears to have none, and Chicago, my current locale, has only two. (The first hit on that Chicago list is not Israeli ... trust me.) Casspi likely will need to visit one of the many Arab dining spots in the Sacramento area, highlighted by this one, which happens, I think by random chance, to bear the same name (Malouf) as the Lebanese-American owners of his current club.

I suppose Israeli immigrants in general face this problem in the United States. The case of Casspi interests me greatly as a b-ball blogger because he is the first Israeli-born player, to my knowledge, to play in the Association. I credit Casspi for not advancing the chauvinistic and inaccurate claim that hummus is "Israeli food".