The Garden Pantry 
West End will soon welcome a new parkside retail and dining precinct, when The Garden Pantry launches in October this year. The contemporary food and lifestyle precinct will sit alongside Boundary Street’s soon-to-open new parkland The Common, West Village’s first public green space. The Garden Pantry will feature tropical-inspired indoor dining and al fresco spaces throughout, plus offer grab-and-go options perfect for snacking in The Common. West Village has this morning announced that Salt Meats Cheese, Cheeky Poke Bar and Mr. Bunz will headline The Garden Pantry’s food offering, joined by Queensland’s first Salt Meats Cheese Cooking School in the newly completed Factory Lane and Bromley Room #2, to open later this year. Head to Food & Drink for further details!

Rahh!Man!
Southside ramen lovers, listen up! This coming Friday August 31 and Saturday September 1, Woolloongabba’s Superfly Funk Eye is teaming up with sibling venue Hai Hai Ramen for a special collaboration called Rahh!Man!. Eden Lane’s Japanese-inspired izakaya will be changing up its regular menu with a pop-up offering from the Hai Hai team, alongside a concise selection of small plates from its standard menu. From 6:00–9:00 pm, you can slurp on triple-broth Tokyo Shoyu Ramen or Vegan Garden Ramen, plus plates of karaage chicken, sweet corn with miso butter and furikake, pork belly bao, and brussels sprouts with yuzu yoghurt. The Superfly team will also be pouring Suntory yuzu highballs, cocktails and all-Australian wines. Get the full details in our Event Guide.

Lagom
A new pop-up dinner series is launching in Brisbane next month, with the first dinner set for Monday September 17. Named Lagom, the concept is the brainchild of friends Mike Bickford and Matt Blackwell who, after working in various awarded restaurants around the world and locally, decided they wanted to create a new dining experience. Matt and Mike met working at Melbourne’s Ides and most recently worked with Josh Lopez at Emporium Hotel and Urbane restaurant respectively, and are now both headed to work at GOMA Restaurant alongside launching their Lagom pop-up series. The first Lagom event will be hosted at East Brisbane’s The Wolfe on Monday September 17, with the $100 ticket including a seven-course tasting menu plus snacks and petit fours, with the option of matched beverages for $60. All proceeds from the dinner will be donated to the Brisbane Children’s Hospital Foundation. For ticketing information, head to our Event Guide.

Nodo
After undergoing extensive renovations, nodo Newstead is back and promises to be better than ever. The gluten-free bakery cafe closed for three weeks to upgrade the kitchen and bakery for increased production and to renovate the cafe space, and reopened its doors yesterday, Monday August 27. nodo now features more seating, table-service brunch, a more customer-friendly grab-and-go system and a new spring brunch menu. The new menu includes never-before-seen dishes and showcases nodo’s selection of house-made gluten-free breads and sourdoughs, plus of course the bakery cafe’s famed dough-free doughnuts.

If you’ve heard something that’s worth mentioning in The Weekend Edition’s Pavement Whispers, email [email protected].