What it is
The Henry is the restaurant Sam Fox built under his own office. Fox Restaurant Concepts moved its headquarters into the building at 44th Street and Camelback Road in 2012, and in 2013 the ground floor opened as what Fox called the greatest neighborhood restaurant: a coffee bar with baristas at the front from early morning, a long menu of American standards for lunch and dinner, a cocktail bar that runs late, and one large, handsome room, with a patio facing Camelback, that does all of it at once.
It became exactly what the name implied, Arcadia’s clubhouse. On a weekday morning the patio is laptops and coffee; at noon it is business lunches and strollers; at seven it is dates and birthday tables of ten; at ten it is the bar. The menu is comfort done with care, a burger and a roast chicken and a salad list that the neighborhood eats twice a week, rather than cooking you would drive across the state for. The service is the best thing about it, which is the Fox signature.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Partly you do not have to: there is now a Henry at Scottsdale 101 and at Uptown Plaza. But the Arcadia room is the original and the full-scale version, at the corner where the Camelback corridor turns into east Phoenix, five minutes from the resorts and ten from Old Town. If you have eaten at Culinary Dropout or North Italia in Scottsdale and wondered where the house style came from, it came from here. And on a weekday morning it is the most useful room in the neighborhood: good coffee, a view of the mountain, nobody hurrying you.
The practical version
Ten minutes from Old Town, straight west on Camelback Road to 44th Street. Open daily from the morning coffee bar through dinner and late drinks. Reserve for weekend brunch and weekend dinner; walk in otherwise. Parking behind the building. Camelback’s Echo Canyon trailhead is five minutes north on 44th, which makes this the post-hike breakfast of record for Arcadia.
When to go
Weekday mornings from 7:30 are the room’s quiet best: the coffee bar at the front with its seasonal drinks, the patio in Camelback’s shadow, the first meetings of the day at the big tables. Weekday lunch is a business room and an easy walk-in. Dinner on a Friday or Saturday is loud and full and needs a reservation; a Tuesday dinner is the same menu at half the volume. Weekend brunch is the neighborhood’s biggest line; book or go elsewhere.
The patio faces the mountain and is in shade through the morning from October to April. In summer the coffee bar and the air conditioning carry the day.
What to order
Breakfast: whatever the baristas are pushing that season from the coffee bar, and the egg dishes, which are large. Lunch: the burger, which is the house standard, or one of the big salads. Dinner: the roast chicken, the short rib, a steak if the table wants one, and the sides shared. The cocktail list is long and well made, and the happy hour at the bar is a quieter way into the room on a weeknight. Dessert is substantial; split it.
With kids
Very good, in the way of all Fox rooms: a noise level that forgives everything, a menu with plain things on it, and a patio. Weekday lunch is the time. Our brunch note has it as the big-table family option west of Scottsdale.
The neighborhood
44th and Camelback is the east gate of Arcadia. Steak 44 is across the intersection to the north, Buck & Rider is two blocks west on Camelback, and the LGO corner at 40th and Campbell is a five-minute drive. The Camelback corridor resorts begin a mile east. Echo Canyon is up 44th Street; the trailhead lot fills by seven on winter weekends, and the coffee bar here is where the people who did not get a space end up.
The story
Sam Fox arrived in the Valley from Tucson in 2001 with two restaurants and opened Bloom at Gainey Village, then North at Kierland Commons in 2002, and over the following decade used Scottsdale as a laboratory: True Food Kitchen, Olive & Ivy, Culinary Dropout, each tested on Scottsdale Road and then taken national. By 2012 the company needed a real headquarters, and Fox chose a building at 44th and Camelback in Arcadia, the neighborhood where he and much of his staff lived. The ground floor was the obvious place for the next experiment.
The Henry, which opened in 2013, was the most personal of them: not a cuisine concept but a room concept, the restaurant a neighborhood would use all day, with a coffee bar run as seriously as the kitchen and a bar run as seriously as both. The local press at the time found the food acceptable and the service excellent, which has remained a fair description and has not hurt it at all. The room filled and stayed filled. When the Cheesecake Factory bought Fox Restaurant Concepts in 2019, The Henry was one of the brands it took national, and there are now Henrys in Dallas, Plano, Houston, Miami, Nashville, West Hollywood, Coronado, Carlsbad and outside Chicago. Arizona got its second at Uptown Plaza, Central and Camelback, in April 2025, and its third at Scottsdale 101 in March 2026. The offices are still upstairs here.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale is where Fox’s ideas were tested and The Henry is where the company lives, so the two are the same story told in different places. Culinary Dropout at the Waterfront is the Scottsdale room most like this one in spirit; North Italia is the Scottsdale original that funded it. The new Henry at Scottsdale 101 means a Scottsdale visitor no longer needs to drive for the menu, but the Arcadia room is still the one with the mountain in the window and the owner upstairs. Our what to eat note explains the Fox effect on the city’s dining.
Getting there
Camelback Road west from Scottsdale Road, three miles to 44th Street; The Henry is on the northeast corner and the lot is behind, off 44th. From the Camelback-corridor resorts, west on Camelback for a mile. From North Scottsdale the Scottsdale 101 branch is the sensible choice. Rideshare from Old Town is a short fare, and the lot behind the building makes driving painless.