Racing to capture the frozen food market, The Ambassador Hotel also launches frozen beef noodles

▲ The Ambassador Hotel has also launched frozen beef noodles — “Five-Star Sichuan Beef Noodles.” (Photo / Provided by The Ambassador Hotel)

Travel Center / Comprehensive Report

Following in the footsteps of Regent Taipei, The Ambassador Hotel has also introduced frozen beef noodles — “Five-Star Sichuan Beef Noodles.” Although they are frozen, the hotel remains highly attentive to quality. Just for the recipe, Chef Hsu Feng-chin from The Ambassador’s Sichuan Cuisine Restaurant modified it many times to ensure the best texture and flavor after thawing. The broth and sauce packets combine over 40 different recipes and take more than 10 hours to simmer.

The Ambassador Hotel has been around for over 52 years, and beef noodles have played a hidden role for half a century, though they were never officially on the Sichuan Cuisine Restaurant’s menu. But turning a great bowl of noodles into a frozen product required modifications. In addition to the chairman — a foodie himself — personally taste-testing and selecting the half-tendon, half-meat combination and adjusting the chewiness of the noodles, there’s also a golden secret sauce packet containing 12 types of Chinese herbs, which is the secret behind the rich flavor of The Ambassador’s beef noodles.


▲ Five-Star Sichuan Beef Trio. (Photo / Provided by The Ambassador Hotel)

For the beef noodle broth, one pot uses beef bones and old hens slow-simmered over a low flame for eight hours to fully extract the essence of the marrow. Another pot carefully selects tender Australian beef shank with a bit of tendon, along with beef tendons and beef, plus six types of Chinese herbs, red chili peppers, peeled garlic, onions, and cilantro — all simmered together to draw out the natural fragrance of the vegetables and the rich gelatin from the beef. No MSG is added. The braising liquid slowly seeps into the cubed beef tendon, and the two broths are then combined at a 1:1 ratio to create a rich yet not overly spicy original-flavor soup base.

To differentiate itself in the market, The Ambassador’s beef noodles come with a special “golden secret sauce packet.” This is made using beef tallow as the base, with spices such as cinnamon, star anise, cardamom, green onions, and celery refined through a low-heat oil infusion to infuse the seasoning flavors into the tallow, creating beef red oil. Then, more than ten types of seasonings such as red chili peppers, fermented black beans, and tender young ginger are first blended in a food processor, then mixed with the previously made beef red oil, Pixian bean paste, and roasted and diced ingredients.

Besides the beef noodles, this launch also includes Water-Boiled Beef Trio, a very famous water-boiled style dish in The Ambassador’s Sichuan cuisine. Its preparation does not involve stir-frying the ingredients in red oil. One of the secrets to its deliciousness is that the spicy broth infuses the flavors into all the ingredients. The trio features slippery and rich beef tendons, tender and flavorful beef tripe, and delicate and fresh beef slices — three different ingredients with distinct textures.

● The Ambassador Five-Star Sichuan Beef Noodles are priced at NT$280 per serving.
● The Ambassador Five-Star Sichuan Beef Trio are priced at NT$430 per serving.