AVONDALE — It appears Chicago can take the heat.
After a mix-up over parking restrictions in July, the postponed Chicago Hot Sauce Fest is debuting this weekend.
Organizer Adrian Gutierrez said 25 vendors will be at Elston and Belmont avenues starting at noon Saturday and Sunday with spicy wings, sauces, jams and eating contests involving the hottest peppers in the world. The last contests start at 6 p.m. each night.
"We were a little worried, because we're a first-year festival, and we were hoping we wouldn't lose too many vendors, but everybody pretty much stuck around," Gutierrez told DNAinfo on Tuesday.
The July 25-26 festival was postponed just three days before it was set to begin. Miscommunication regarding when to file paperwork meant the Chicago Department of Transportation didn't have enough time or manpower to place "No Parking" signs to clear the intersection for the festival, Gutierrez said.
Ald. Deb Mell (33rd) signed off on the festival in July and tried to keep it on its original date, but to no avail.
On Tuesday, Mell's chief of staff Dana Fritz confirmed "everything's good to go on the city's end and good to go in general."
The delay even allowed for a couple more vendors to sign up, and the festival added two more eating contests. The first features the atomic sucker, one of the hottest peppers in the world with a Scoville rating of more than 2 million. For comparison, the Scoville scale, which ranks the intensity of a pepper's heat, rates jalapenos at 2,500. There will also be a contest for eating ghost pepper candy.
Pilsen's Dia De Los Tamales was able to keep the festival on its packed summer roster, and owner Jeni Wahl said the organizers communicated the situation well.
"For us, it wasn't a huge issue. It's easy to move through the quantity of food we prep for something like [this festival] versus a Pitchfork or a Lollapalooza," which would have been "a little more devastating," Wahl said.
This weekend, all seven hot sauces from Dia De Los Tamales will be sold at the festival, along with the Atomic Pork Tamale, which has some of the eatery's Apocalyptic Sauce — featuring ghost peppers and garlic — mixed in.
There is a $5 suggested donation that will benefit Friends of Linne, which helps Carl Von Linne School, 3221 N. Sacramento Ave.
For scheduling information, visit ChicagoHotSauceFest.com.
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