RA Sushi 4th Anniversary Luau Benefiting Miami Children’s Hospital Foundation 9/13/12
RA Sushi to host 4th Anniversary Luau Benefiting Miami Children’s Hospital Foundation 
Thursday, September 13 from 7 p.m. to close
RA Sushi in South Miami
5829 SW 73rd St.
Miami, FL 33143.
For reservations, please call 305.341.0092. For more information, visit www.Facebook.com/RASushiSouthMiami .
Guests will celebrate with great drink and food specials, a limbo contest ($100 gift card for winner), and raffle. Proceeds benefit the Miami Children’s Hospital Foundation.
In celebration of RA Sushi in South Miami’s four-year anniversary, and as a reward to Miamians for surviving the past few sweltering summer months, the South Miami location will say “Aloha, Summer†with the 4th Anniversary Luau on Thursday, Sept. 13, from 7 p.m. to close. Proceeds from the evening will be donated to the Miami Children’s Hospital Foundation, the vision of which is to ensure the health and happiness of children everywhere.
With scorching hot food and drink specials served all night long, and a special guest D.J. mixing cool beats, bid farewell to summer and say hello to four years in South Miami in true RA Sushi style. Guests are encouraged to get in the luau spirit by throwing on their best Hawaiian styles and partaking in RA’s signature limbo contest (winner receives $100 gift card).
Chill out at RA Sushi with So Long Summer drink specials, available for $5, include: Long Island Iced Tea; Frozen Fuzzy Momo Bellini; Red/White Summer Sake Sangria; the Dragon Bite, featuring Bacardi Dragon Berry, strawberry purée, fresh lemon juice, yuzu and a splash of soda; and the Endless Summer Night with Sauza Tequila, Citronage, pineapple, orange and lime juice, and a splash of grenadine. Beer drinkers have the choice of $3 Bud Light and Miller Light or $5 Kirin/Kirin Light and sake.
A variety of summer-themed food specials will be offered for the evening, including signature rolls such as the Seaside Roll ($7) with rice and seaweed wrapped around cucumber and shrimp, then topped with spicy shrimp; or the Sunset Roll ($6), rice and seaweed rolled with cucumber and spicy tuna and then topped with red tempura bits. Creations made for sharing include Grilled Beef Skewers ($8), Summer School Chicken Nuggets ($6), and Kaisen Ceviche ($7.25). Heat up the party with the Bonfire Shrimp ($9): crispy, spicy shrimp and shishito peppers tossed with ramen noodles and black sesame seeds in a chili sauce.
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.
