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.