Macy’s at Aventura Mall Host Flavors Of Miami Spice With Fashion’s Night Out 9/6/12
Macy’s at Aventura Mall Host Flavors Of Miami Spice With Fashion’s Night Out 
Thursday, September 6, 2012 from 7 to 8:30 p.m.
Macy’s Aventura Mall
19535 Biscayne Boulevard
Aventura, FL.
Free and open-to-the-public, however space is limited. Reservations for this event are required by calling Casey Garcia at (305) 577-1588 or via e-mail at casey.garcia@macys.com.
Culinary Event to Feature Tasting Samples from Miami Spice Participating Restaurants
Macy’s Department Store has recently joined forces with the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau (GMCVB) to introduce Flavors of Miami Spice, a fabulous culinary and fashion extravaganza to be held at Macy’s Aventura Mall on Thursday, September 6, 2012, during the world’s most important fashion event, Fashion’s Night Out.
Guests will join editors, celebrities, fashion models, fashionistas, and designers for a fun-filled evening, featuring complimentary tasting samples from Miami Spice participating restaurants, including II Mulino NY-Miami, Cascata Grill, Bongo’s Cuban Cafe, Larios On The Beach and Morton’s The Steakhouse (North Miami Beach). Throughout the night, guests will enjoy delicious mojitos and piña coladas courtesy of Bacardi as well as beer provided by Stella Artois. In addition, attendees will have the opportunity to win Miami Spice dinner vouchers (redeemable at specific participating restaurants).
Fashion’s Night Out is an unprecedented global initiative created in 2009 in a partnership between American Vogue, the Council of Fashion Designers of America, NYC & Company, and the City of New York to celebrate fashion, restore consumer confidence, boost the industry’s economy and put the fun back in shopping. Since then, the event has grown exponentially, expanding nationally in 2011 to over 250 cities and globally into 18 countries.
Now in its 11th year, the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau’s (GMCVB) Miami Spice Restaurant Program is the wildly anticipated summer celebration in which Greater Miami restaurants offer discounted three-course lunch and dinner menus. New to the program this year is a second pricing option, offering Miami Spice fans more diverse and wide-ranging dining options, simultaneously from August 1 – September 30, 2012. The expanded format of Miami Spice – presented by American Express and sponsored by BACARDI® rum and Stella Artois – consists of two restaurant groups: Luxury dining restaurants and fine dining restaurants. Luxury dining restaurants offer three course prix-fixe lunches at $23. per person, dinners at $39. Fine dining restaurants feature menus at $19. for lunch, $33. for dinner. For an up-to-date list of participating restaurants, menus, and scheduled events, visit the Miami Spice Restaurant Program’s dedicated website: www.iLoveMiamiSpice.com. Follow Miami Spice on Twitter @MiamiandBeaches.
When the words “pastry” and “Miami” come together, the first thought that usually comes to mind for locals and tourists, alike, is Cuban pastry – those little geometric shapes of crispy, lardy, flakiness most famously filled with guava paste and/or cream cheese.  Cuban culture and cuisine have come to be almost synonymous with Miami culture, and apart from the plethora of Cuban bakeries on almost every corner in western Miami, practically every supermarket in South Florida carries pastelitos and croqueticas.  However, after having moved to North Miami Beach and then bouncing around different neighborhoods in the northeastern part of Dade County, I discovered that Cuban pastries are not as prevalent in this part of the Magic City as they might be in Hialeah, Little Havana, Kendall, or Coral Gables.  Whereas Español might be the language of choice in those neighborhoods, Kreyòl is the lingua franca in places like North Miami, North Miami Beach, Miami Shores, and Little Haiti where it’s easier to find a place to grab a box of griot (spicy fried pork chunks) and a Choucoune (champagne cola)  than it is to find a Cuban sandwich and a cafecito.  Haitian culture is very prominent in northeastern Miami, which means that Spanglish phrases widely accepted in other parts of the city are usually met with blank stares (I learned this the hard way), and the chances of finding a fresh guava and cheese pastry can be slim to none.
Discovering Haitian cuisine is a gastronomic revelation for any true foodie.  While the cuisine is unpretentious and simple, the flavors are bold and spicy, oftentimes quite unique, and demonstrate a very African culinary aesthetic paired with a very French sophistication.  One area in which this cross-cultural fusion of techniques and palates can be experienced almost perfectly is in a Haitian patty, which is an anglicization of the Creole word “pate” (pronounced pah-tey) derived from the French word “patisserie”, which simply means pastry.  In form, it more closely resembles a Cuban pastelito than a Jamaican patty.  Like Cuban pastries, Haitian patties consist of delicate, flakey puff pastry surrounding some sort of filling, but the similarities end there.  The main difference between the two pastries is that while Cuban pastries are best known for their sweet fillings, Haitian patties are almost exclusively savory, and even when comparing  savory pastries from both cuisines, Haitian patties are noticeably spicier and have bolder flavors.  The most typical fillings are ground beef, ground chicken, salted cod (bacalao), smoked herring, and ground turkey.  There is also a difference in the crusts between Cuban pastries and Haitian patties.  While Cuban pastries place value on crispiness and have more brittle crusts that are glazed to complement the usually sweet fillings, Haitian patties go unglazed and place emphasis on producing as many impossibly delicate layers as possible.  Like most pastries, Haitian patties are best when they are fresh out of the oven in the morning, making them an ideal choice for a breakfast on the go, especially if you’re one who prefers something savory for breakfast over something sweet.  There are two main shapes to take into account with Haitian patties that usually denote the two most popular fillings: beef patties (and sometimes chicken) are square while cod patties (and sometimes herring) are triangular.
