7th annual Sammy’s International Meatball Festival benefits Boys and Girls Club of Cathedral City

The 7th annual Sammy’s International Meatball Festival took place on Sunday.

This year it was held at the Boys and Girls Club of Cathedral City.

The festival included plenty of meatball tasting of course, a live band, raffles and access to Sammy’s beer & wine garden.

Several local businesses as well as some Cathedral City government agencies were there hoping to have their meatballs win the top prize.

We spoke with Sammy Pace who sits on the board with the Boys and Girls Club of Cathedral City. The festival is named after him. He’s Italian and told us he started the festival seven years ago to try to find the best Italian meatballs in the Coachella Valley.

Every year the festival gets bigger and bigger. Hundreds of people came out to try some of the best meatballs in town.

Each contestant in the meatball contest must make 400 meatballs to feed the large crowd.

The Cathedral City Police and Fire Departments brought their own versions of the classic favorite.

We caught up with some festival goers as they were going booth by booth tasting the meatballs.

“There’s been a couple of them that have been really good. There was one that was Asian inspired and a couple of kiddos that made the best with marinara sauce and it tasted like there was cheese in it so it was absolutely amazing,” Joshua Widemann shared.

All the proceeds from this year’s meatball festival will benefit the Boys and Girls Club of Cathedral City.

KESQ