The new West Dallas location of Henry’s Majestic feels familiar, even if the sheer size of the space changes its operations. The restaurant replaced the Foundry and Chicken Scratch after its Uptown location was bulldozed to make way for apartments. A new neighborhood gave the restaurant an opportunity to revamp a few things.
The menu features classic Henry’s dishes like the bone marrow burger and the carnitas dumplings. But there are new items, too, like halibut aguachile served with dragon fruit chile water. There are sprawling outdoor patios with fire pits and picnic tables. Inside is a massive bar for sweet, sweet libations, which happens to include one of the biggest additions for the restaurant.
When it reopened earlier this month, Henry’s Majestic introduced a new zero waste cocktail program created by mixologist Alex Fletcher. Fletcher was the creator of the restaurant’s original bar program and Atwater Alley, the speakeasy attached to the original Henry’s. The restaurant was the first bar program Fletcher had ever written from start to finish, he says, and his idea was to just “have fun with it.”
Fletcher left Henry’s Majestic in 2019, and he went on to create bar programs for places such as Trick Pony, The Quarter Bar Dallas, and Bread Winners Café. He started Bar None Consulting and took Henry’s Majestic as a client. He decided to join in on the revamp when Henry’s Majestic owner Andrew Popp showed Fletcher the new space on Pittman Street, just off Commerce.
“I went over there and met them and saw the giant potential that was within that building and how cool of a space it was,” he says. “[I] kind of fell in love with it.”
The new cocktail menu has a wave of nostalgia, considering about 60 percent is a “revitalization” of the old cocktails for regulars. New cocktails are also just as good, though: Fletcher’s favorites include the Sparkling Strawberry Cozmo—made with vodka, housemade strawberry cordial, citrus, and cranberry—and the Smiling Jack’s Nightcap, which uses a bourbon washed with pear butter.
The new menu prioritizes producing as little waste as possible. Fletcher designed it to be sustainable by formulating recipes with ingredients that can be used in different cocktails, trying to use as much of an ingredient as possible, or sourcing from sustainable brands.
The Can’t Hardly Wait, for example, is made with bourbon, citrus, honey, blackberry preserves, and sage. The bourbon comes from BENDT Distilling Co. in Lewisville, and uses lemon juice from lemons they can source as nearby as possible. The lemon rinds are used to make a citrus stock or tri-citrus bitters, or they’ll be candied for cocktail garnishes and embellishments. The blackberries were preserved from blackberry season (May to June), and the sage was grown in the Henry’s Majestic backyard.
Fletcher also spent time sourcing sustainable wines and stocking a back bar that focuses on sustainable brands. A few spirits being used at Henry’s Majestic are sourced from Green Bar, a company based out of Los Angeles. Every time a bottle is purchased, the company plants a tree.
“It’s to kind of get in that balance act,” Fletcher says. “If I’m going to have to create waste, I’m going to have to also be able to give back at the same time.”
This program is the most sustainable Fletcher’s created, he says, though sustainability has been more of a personal journey. He took a few programs through MIT on sustainability in the industry, and he wanted to merge what he learned with his work. Right now, he’s writing a zero waste cocktail book called “Wasted: A Thoughtful Approach on Cocktails,” which he hopes to release soon.
Fletcher has a rotating waste log that tracks what they’ve used and what they haven’t. Soon, he wants to add to the program a special weekly cocktail using leftover ingredients and sell it throughout the week until all the ingredients are gone. He says it’ll be a challenge that’s as fun as it is worthwhile.
“I think that the most important thing that we can possibly do while we’re in our day-to-day lives is making sure we’re not thrashing the place,” he says. “It’s a beautiful world, and I hope we all can live in it for a long time.”
Henry’s Majestic, 2303 Pittman St.
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