The phrase "a rare request" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when referring to a request that is uncommon or not frequently made.
Example: "Receiving a donation for such a specific cause is indeed a rare request."
Alternatives: "an unusual request" or "a unique request."
So Mr. Hill filed a direct appeal to the Supreme Court — a rare request the court even more rarely grants — asking it to order the lower courts to weigh the new evidence.
1939: Botanist Agnes Arber asked to referee a manuscript, a rare request to a non-fellow.
While members of the victims' families have in the past made appeals to the Olympic committee, Ayalon's was a rare request from the Israeli government on behalf of the families.
Joseph C. Massino, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2005 after becoming the first official boss of one New York's five mob families to testify for the government, could be released early if a judge honors a rare request from prosecutors to reduce his sentence.
Mr. Calderón's 2006 decision to directly battle the drug cartels had produced a rare request for American help, and the response by the United States — the $1.6 billion Mérida Initiative — was just moving into a phase focused on institutional reform and American cooperation when Mr. Pascual arrived.
Prominent coverage by other Hong Kong news media helped generate a public outcry and protests, including one Thursday outside the paper's office in the city, and a rare request by Hong Kong's leader for an investigation by Beijing into the death.
As the vote was held on Thursday afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, made the rare request of asking all 99 of his colleagues to be present and to vote from their desks.
Gen. Lorenzo Thomas, by the "express direction of the President of the United States," sent a telegram to Young making the rare request for help from the Army to a private citizen and the head of a church.
One day after sentencing him to five years in jail on charges of embezzlement, which Navalny's supporters called politically motivated, a judge in the provincial city of Kirov approved a rare prosecution request to release him from police custody during the appeal process.
RICHMOND - Virginia will ask that the U.S. Supreme Court immediately review the state's constitutional challenge to the federal health-care overhaul, a rare legal request to bypass appeals and ask for early intervention from the nation's highest court, Attorney General Ken T. Cuccinelli II said Thursday.
Diners who want their meat rare request it jugoso, or juicy; otherwise it's a punto, medium, or bien hecho, well done.
