Red-hot Columbus festival called off for 2021

For the second consecutive year, the Columbus Fiery Foods Festival has been cancelled.

And just when things were starting to heat up.

This means no hot sauce sampling or spicy pizza snacking. It means your chance to watch a few brave, unfortunate souls chow down on several of the world’s spiciest peppers is out of the question as well.

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And while event organizers were gunning for the festival to take place this year—there was no event in 2020 either—it simply wasn’t in the cards this year.

“With a lot of people worrying about traveling right now, many of our vendors just couldn’t get here,” said Mike Gallicchio, one of the festival’s directors.

As vendors provide much of the actual substance and variety for the event—showing off spicy salsa or a brightly-colored bundle of different hot sauces—the Columbus Fiery Foods Festival simply doesn’t work without them.

“We didn’t want to pull everything together and end up with only 15 vendors selling hot sauce,” Gallicchio said, noting that the event typically hosts at least 65 or 70.

“Because the bottom line is we need to have a ton of them to make things make sense.” 

One of the more frustrating aspects of the 2021 cancellation for Gallicchio comes from the abundance of exciting events he had on this year’s docket.

While this included the event’s signature hot pepper eating contest, it didn’t end there.  

“We had a ton of great stuff lined up, hot pizza, hot peppers, hot wings, even hot sushi,” he said.

Gallicchio did confirm, however, that the 2022 festival is slated to take place. So here’s to next year, chiliheads.

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