Henry's Hunan Restaurant has recently substantially changed their menu.
They still had their prior menu for our 2026-02-17 meeting, but by our
2026-03-17 meeting, they had a quite substantially changed menu.
In very brief, quite substantially different - and also very good!
Henry's Hunan Restaurant never disappoints.
In bit more detail:
Gone are many of the old favorites, though some
still remain. E.g. gone from the appetizers and soups are:
spring rolls
Diana's meat pie
onion cakes
hot and sour soup
The one item unchanged in those two categories is dumplings.
And in those categories, added are two new soups that they've never had
before.
Many old menu items / favorites are gone, but many new items added,
and thus far all indications are they're all quite delicious.
I did right off notice, coming in their door, that things were smelling
wonderfully good.
Much (maybe even all?) of what's been added, much more authentic
traditional Hunan dishes. I think a fair number of what had for
years(/decades) been off-menu but available, are now very much well on
menu.
And certainly a fair number of the old favorites very well remain,
e.g. Henry's Special.
So, yeah, quite different but I - in fact all three of us that dined
there this past Tuesday's meeting, very much liked the food - it was
highly delicious. So, yes, very different menu, but we were all very,
if not highly to exceedingly, pleased with it.
And prices, for most items still quite reasonable, though they likely
also went up a moderate bit. There are also some substantially pricier
dishes available too, but those are much more the exception than the
rule. Vast majority of dishes are quite reasonably priced and really
good value and quality for the price. Also, quantities on at least many
of the dishes are highly generous. So, e.g. this past Tuesday, there
were three of us, we ordered two dishes and also rice for all, and with
just that and the large portions on those two dishes, we all quite well
ate our fill (and probably bit more), and still had a fair bit of
delicious leftovers to take home (and sure as heck did, and that
remaining deliciousness was consumed soon thereafter). All that and tax
and tip we got out of there for about 25 bucks a head or slight bit over
that.
And some menu history. So, this is first change in fair while - some
moderate number of years. They did a fairly significant change a few
years or so ago - their first change in many many many years (if not
"forever") - other than some modest price adjustments over the years.
That earlier change, they'd significantly streamlined the menu. They
used to have many many items - probably around 6 to perhaps as many as
about 10 pages worth. Well, the earlier change, they reduced that to
about 1/3 or so as many menu items. And since their business is
majority office worker lunches, and mostly lesser numbers for evening
dinner (notably on account of their location, mostly business offices
all around them and densely so, not nearly as much residential, and not
much cheap or free parking very close), like probably almost all
restaurants in the area and similar locations, business is still
substantially down compared to before COVID-19. Many many restaurants
didn't survive at all. Some still have signs from 2020 effectively "see
you in two weeks!" from the shelter-in-place, never to reopen again.
Henry's was lucky to manage to survive, and just barely at that. They
lost all of their other locations. And in talking with staff there,
were it not for some of the government assistance around COVID-19
pandemic, the business wouldn't have survived at all. So, we're
relatively lucky to still even have Henry's, and that they're at least
reasonably well surviving and have made it through. Hope their customer
base continues to grow, but the customer base for there and restaurants
in similar locations still just isn't what it was before, and may still
take years to get back up to those levels ... if it even ever does.
With lots more work being remote than was once the case, things have
changed, and some of those changes will probably mostly be forever.