August 1, 2011, Updated September 12, 2012


The town of Abu Ghosh, a mostly Arab town in the green hills outside of Jerusalem, is the “hummus capital” of Israel. And the most well-known of 15 restaurants there is the Abu Ghosh Restaurant, run by Jaodat Ibrahim since 1993.

Abu Ghosh

Abu Ghosh today has 15 hummus restaurants enticing visitors from all over Israel.

Ibrahim started his business after winning the lottery in Chicago, and chose to invest his winnings in the place where he’d grown up. “I decided to come back home and establish my dream,” he says. His restaurant gets about 15,000 patrons on weekends.

Last year, with a vision of coexistence in mind, Ibrahim put Israel on the map by capturing a record from the Guinness Book of Records for the largest amount of hummus made at one time, edging out a Beirut restaurant for the title. The Abu Ghosh chefs prepared 9,000 pounds of the creamy chickpea paste, enough to fill a large satellite dish.

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