More menu choices at Hop Sing

 

While Hop Sing, the Chinese Restaurant in Ponderosa Golf & Country Club, caters mainly to golfers and club members, this restaurant remains popular with walk-in diners, not just from the neighbourhood but even from Johor Bahru city.

 

Entrance to Hop Sing on Level One of the
clubhouse at Ponderosa Golf & Country Club

Ponderosa Golf & Country Club is an established resort with an 18-hole golf course, a 16-room Mediterranean-style lodge, sports and recreations facilities, a spa as well as a café for casual dining and a Chinese restaurant named Hop Sing.

 

Fans of Bonanza, a long-running television series (1959 to 1973), will be familiar with fictional characters in the ranch called Ponderosa owned by Ben Cartwright and his three sons, Adam, Eric “Hoss” and Joseph, better known as Little Joe.

 

Their cook, Hop Sing, a Chinese man who always appeared dressed in traditional sam-foo and sporting a pigtail, was another character in this popular TV series.

 

A serving of Double-boiled Watercress Soup

It was charming that the Chinese restaurant in Ponderosa Golf & Country Club was so named after Hop Sing, a fictional character from a TV series in a bygone era.

 

The culinary team at Hop Sing has earned a fine reputation for serving up Chinese cuisine in homestyle cooking that I had the pleasure of savouring in both dine-in and takeaway banquet meals.

 

To cater to diners in our multicultural community, Hop Sing prepares food using ingredients sourced from Halal food suppliers in dishes with no pork and no lard.

 

A serving of Beancurd topped with chai poh

The culinary team makes every effort to perfect recipes to add into the restaurant menu. A recent addition that is popular with diners was Mango Salad Prawns, a cold dish where prawns are served deshelled yet presented whole with its head and tail.

 

Mindful that traditional Chinese cuisine may not be familiar to people in our multicultural community, so the culinary team aims to introduce the taste of various ingredients and food preparations to the Malay and Indian palate.

 

Stir-fried sliced Beef with Garlic

For instance, the goodness of double-boiled soup is presented in individual bowls of Double-boiled Watercress Chicken Soup. The pieces of chicken with skin removed are brewed with watercress, a soothing recipe recommended to cool the body in such warm weather.

 

Diners who are familiar with Laksa Johor know that chai poh or preserved radish is an essential ingredient in the original recipe for this noodle dish, so Hop Sing is pleased to introduce another simple dish in Beancurd topped with chai poh.

 

While diners may be familiar with salted eggs and century eggs, the latter may be an acquired taste so Hop Sing made the effort to fry pieces of the eggs and served them with Chinese Spinach in Superior Soup.

 

A serving of Kuey Teow Bulan

There are many ways to prepare and serve cuts of beef but the stir-fried sliced Beef with Garlic served at Hop Sing turned out to be a hit with diners as the tender slices of beef quickly disappeared from the platter.

 

In addition to golfers, diners at Hop Sing include office workers at lunchtime who often preferred to dine on personal portions of noodles.

 

Some popular noodle choices are prepared with Kuey Teow, flat rice noodles or Hor Fun (in Cantonese), or Bee Hoon, rice vermicelli, in Fried Bee Hoon and Cantonese Fried Hor Fun, also known as Wat Tarn Hor, flat rice noodles in silky egg.

 

Hop Sing also serves a noodle dish dubbed, Kuey Teow Bulan, a literal translation of Moonlight Kuey Teow, also known as Yuit Kong Hor (in Cantonese).

 

Deep-fried banana and sweet potato 
served Johor-style with a side of sambal dip sauce

This dish was so-named because a raw egg is served in the center of the platter for diners to toss the warm noodles in the egg to enjoy its silky and savoury tastes.

 

In a recent renovation to the clubhouse, a dumbwaiter was installed to link Hop Sing with Cafe@Ponderosa on the Ground level so that menu items prepared by either of the kitchens, may be conveniently served to diners in either of the two restaurants.

 

Cool treat of Cendol

Golfers have enjoyed this convenience when they dined at either Cafe@Ponderosa or Hop Sing so now diners may also request for popular staples like Pisang Goreng or fried bananas and slices of sweet potatoes, served Johor style with a side of sambal kicap dip.

 

Another popular choice must be the cool treat of shaved ice on Cendol, threads of green flour swimming in coconut milk, flavoured with Gula Melaka or palm sugar.

 

Hop Sing, the Chinese Restaurant is on Level One of the main clubhouse of Ponderosa Golf & Country Club at No. 3 Jalan Ponderosa 1/1, Taman Ponderosa, 81100 Johor Baru, Johor. Open from 11am to 3pm for lunch and from 6pm to 10pm for dinner.

 

For reservations or to order, Tel: 019 – 728 8464 or 019 – 779 9841 or email: enquiry@ponderosagolf.com.  For more info, visit website: ponderosagolf.com