The number in Bistro 234’s name is also its Main Street address. Open since 2001, the restaurant has become part of downtown’s dining history—and in 2026, a chef from its own kitchen is helping lead its next chapter.
Updated 2026.
A downtown table for lunch or dinner
Bistro 234 is at 234 E. Main Street, Turlock. Its published menu covers lunch and dinner, with sandwiches and salads alongside pasta, seafood and steaks. The bar serves cocktails, and the restaurant’s founding idea was approachable fine dining: room for a drink and a small plate as well as a full meal.
The restaurant advertises lunch and dinner Tuesday through Saturday. Book through its reservation page, which links to Resy, or call 209-668-4234 for a table and current kitchen hours.
What the menu tells you
The online lunch and dinner menus give a useful sense of Bistro’s cooking: familiar dishes with attention to sauces, herbs and accompaniments. A few examples:
- Lunch: the chicken-salad croissant adds honey Dijon and golden raisins; the open-faced Mediterranean Mushroom Melt combines mushrooms, artichokes, capers, olives and provolone.
- Pasta: potato gnocchi comes with chicken and brown-butter sage cream. Butternut-squash tortelloni and ricotta-spinach ravioli offer other directions.
- Dinner: the menu pairs New York strip with mushroom demi-glace, and pan-seared ahi with a plum sauce and jasmine rice. French onion soup, grilled polenta and crab cakes appear among the smaller dishes.
The October 2026 ownership change
The Turlock Journal reported on October 10, 2026 that longtime chef and owner LeRoy Walker sold his stake in Bistro 234 to chef Nestor Jacobo and Tom and Christine Murphy. Walker and his wife, Mohini Singh, are concentrating on First & Main. Walker described the strain of running two kitchens and wanting to give one restaurant his full attention.
A restaurant with roots in local classrooms
Walker’s route into the kitchen began with school cooking classes and catering. In a 2018 interview with produce supplier FreshPoint, he recalled discovering cooking in eighth and ninth grade, then entering a Regional Occupational Program. He joined Bistro shortly after its 2001 opening. His interest in heirloom tomatoes, melons, asparagus and shishito peppers helps explain the seasonal ingredients that recur in the restaurant’s story.
Jacobo brings another local connection. Kitchens for Change’s biography describes him as born and raised in Turlock, with experience in his family’s restaurants in Sonora and Sinaloa, Mexico, and in Pitman High School’s culinary program.
In the Journal’s account of a 2023 senior dinner, Walker and Jacobo helped plan a meal while Kitchens for Change students did the cooking. The connection between classrooms, restaurant kitchens and community meals gives Bistro’s succession a local context beyond a business sale.
Its place on Main Street
Bistro’s history also leads a few blocks west. When First & Main opened in 2019, the Modesto Bee described the two restaurants’ different approaches: Bistro’s European influences with California touches, and First & Main’s interpretations of Asian dishes. Longtime Bistro partners Jennifer Doerksen and LeRoy Walker had built a second downtown restaurant with its own identity.
Bistro makes sense as part of a downtown outing: lunch before browsing the shops, or a reserved dinner after spending time on Main Street. For a daytime courtyard meal farther east, see Loza Wine & Crepes. The Shopping & Dining directory connects these restaurants with other places around town.
