Spice up your weekend with this hot competitive eating event. Pepper Palooza heads to Erie
An event that benefits veterans is bringing the heat, and national competitive eaters, to Erie with spicy pepper-eating contests.
As part of the second annual Roll-In for Veterans All Wheel Rally event, Erie Sports Center and the League of Fire, the chili eating champions organization, will host the Harvest 912 Lake Erie Pepper Palooza at 8161 Oliver Road on Saturday.
Spectators can witness a hot pepper-eating competition while hanging out with Johnny Scoville, Brian Ambs and others from the hit Hulu/Disney+ series “Superhot: The Spicy World of Pepper People.”
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“The contestants fly in from all over the United States and try for these prizes and belts that they can win,” said Dawn Brown, organizer for Roll-In for Veterans. “They’ll be on stage where our bands play during certain hours that these events will take place.”
During this contest, the national contestants will be given a select amount of time to finish off peppers that get progressively hotter as the contest goes on.
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“It’s tough as they are only given a certain amount of time to eat these peppers,” Brown said. “If you can’t consume these peppers in that amount of time, then you are out. It goes until the last contestant, so basically the peppers get hotter and hotter and hotter.”
You can enter a hot pepper-eating contest, too
Not only will there be the national contest, but Erie will host its own hot pepper-eating contest Friday from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Pepper Palooza will be filled with vendors that will focus on pepper products.
“There’s (a) vendor that’s coming in that puts hot peppers in chocolate,” Brown said. “Plus, we have our own local craft vendors that will be up there also that are supporting the event.”
Wally Sue’s Lemonade will feature a hot lemonade to go along with the Pepper Palooza theme.
Brown said that the event will include a large basket raffle, along with free giveaways.
“All of the baskets are valued at $150 and above,” Brown said. “There will be free giveaways, a VIP tent experience and more. The Pepper Palooza people will also be in the parade (July 13 at 9:30 a.m.); they will be pulled in the back of a hay wagon.”
A crazy hot new putt-putt challenge
Pepper Palooza will also have a new putt-putt challenge open to all chili heads called the “9 Holes of Hell.”
“It will have 36 contestants,” Brown said. “If they miss the putt then they have to eat a hot pepper. It continues to get hotter and hotter as the nine holes go on.”
Participants must be 18 years or older to enter the putting contest.
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The chili-eating belt matches
Spectators will have two chances to see the bigger chili pepper eating matches on Saturday at 1 p.m. and then Sunday at 10 a.m. Both belt matches will take place at the Erie Sports Center main stage.
Contact Nicholas Sorensen at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Pepper Palooza comes to Erie as part of Roll-In for Veterans event