Pepper Leaf Innovative Asian Cuisine

Pepper Leaf actually includes the ‘Innovative Asian Cuisine’ in their name, which always had alarm bells ringing in my head — ‘Innovative’ combined with ‘Asian’ seems to usually evoke an offering that’s someones chosen twist at converting a nice, classic dish into somethine… well… less. Luckily a friend convinced us to give it a try — it’s in the gold section of the Entertainment Guide so we knew we’d get a bit of a bargain, and we made the trek out to Tea Tree Gully.
So, the innovation appears to be the ‘choose your meat and sauce’ for the wok tossed dishes — I’ve seen someone else mention taste disasters that people can choose with these, and yes, I’d second that — the good news, if you know your combinations, the wok tossed dishes are good here — it’s Vietnamese styled Asian, and refreshingly well done. The ginger, chilli & lemongrass sauce is particularly well done, fragrant, full of flavour, and has just the right bite of chilli and ginger — perfect with chicken.
You have to try their Vietnamese spring rolls, too — minced prawn meat cooked in a luscious crisp pastry shell. Recommended.
Parking is a breeze, with a huge on site car park available. Have always been able to get a booking, but the restaurant is usually busy enough that it’s well worth booking ahead to be sure you get a table.
Lookout for the huge catfish — it’s probably one of the biggest I’ve seen in an aquarium :)