By Gary Nager
New Tampa Rotary Club president Peter Gambacorta says he had no choice but to postpone indefinitely this year’s New Tampa Rotary PigFest.
This year’s planned tenth annual event had been scheduled for the weekend of Feb. 21-22 at Primrose Park off Commerce Park Blvd. in Tampa Palms, but Gambacorta says he just couldn’t make it happen.
The PigFest — an event which was started ten years ago by New Tampa’s “Breakfast” Rotary Club (which meets Fridays at 7 a.m. at Tampa Palms Golf & Country Club) — was last held in 2012 at St. Mark the Evangelist Catholic Church. The 2013 event was actually cancelled, despite its previously successful run, first at TPGCC and then at St. Mark.
The annual PigFest, which grew to benefit the charities of as many as six local Rotary Clubs, featured barbecue teams each roasting a pig all night and serving samples the next day for a panel of judges, along with other food, beer and wine, great entertainment and even pie-eating contests and cash prize drawings.
“I really had hoped to be able to bring the Rotary PigFest back to its former glory,” says Gambacorta, “but I had to have a committed committee of Rotarians to make it happen. I couldn’t sell 1,000 or more tickets and handle all of the logistics and planning myself.”
Gambacorta, who owns the Private Chef of Tampa catering company, also had planned to expand the PigFest by offering a wild game dinner the night before the big event, but that dinner also has been postponed.
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