Mac's Old House Is Back. What Antioch Regulars Will Recognize, and What's New

When a restaurant has served "well over three million meals," how much can a new owner change before it stops feeling like the same place? The people who bought Mac's Old House at 3100 E. 18th Street settled that question at the start. When they leased the restaurant to its new operators, they required them to keep the name and the menu.

That requirement explains most of the reopening. The food, the bar and the look of the dining room were the parts the owners chose to protect. Their money went into a bigger kitchen, more parking, new bathrooms, card readers and a lunch shift. If you knew the old Mac's, the meal should look familiar, and the changes are mostly in the places diners never had reason to see.

The gap between June 2025 and August 2026

Mac's served its last meals under the previous team on Sunday, June 22, 2025. The Antioch Herald called it a 69-year-old institution. Gary Noe and Rick Cook had run it for 42 of those years, and the reason they gave for closing was simple: it was "time to hang up our hats."

The Herald reported on December 6, 2025 that a Facebook announcement four days earlier had named Joe Martinez and Ron Harrison as the buyers. They were aiming to reopen in June 2026 and planned to keep the restaurant intact while bringing it up to code. June slipped. The owners held a soft-opening dinner for friends on Tuesday, August 4, 2026, and scheduled the public grand opening for Saturday, August 15 at 4 p.m. The full ownership group is Ron and Jamie Harrison and Joe and Desiree Martinez.

For about 14 months, the town went without its family-style prime rib house. The way the new owners closed that gap shows what they thought the place was worth.

Why a buyer would lock in a menu

Most people who buy a restaurant building want room to change things. Martinez and Harrison went the other way. Harrison put it plainly at the soft opening: "We lease the restaurant to Sheri and required her to keep the same name and menu."

The reasons they gave were personal and historical. Harrison called Mac's "one of the last historic places in Antioch" and said he and his wife saw this as their chance to own it. Martinez set up the purchase as a family trust "for my grandchildren" and said the plan is to keep the restaurant "for the next 40 years, the next generation."

Martinez was also a customer before he was an owner. In November 2025 he told Contra Costa News that he used to come to Mac's with his family, that the soup and bread were his favorites, and that the soup was "the best" he had tried. Requiring the same menu keeps that soup on it.

The protection also covers the cooking. In the December sale announcement, Martinez said former chef Rick Cook would help pass on the recipes, and that the operator could add a few items. So the menu is fixed at its core but not frozen, and the plan was for the person who cooked it for decades to help with the handoff.

What stayed, what changed

Each item below comes from the closing, sale and reopening coverage.

The left column is what you taste and sit in. The right column is mostly back-of-house work. That split is the clearest evidence of how the owners went about this.

The meal the owners protected

Before it closed, the Herald described Mac's as a dine-in, family-style restaurant built around prime rib and pasta, with affordable cocktails. Dinners came with baked bread, minestrone, salad, pasta and sautéed vegetables. Entrées included prime rib, ribeye, salmon, red snapper, calamari steak, chicken and ground round.

That is the menu the operators agreed to keep. In December the buyers also said they were working to keep prices low. The baseline is modest. According to the Mercury News, for decades Mac's was cash-only, with dinner prices from $8.95 to $23.95 and drinks from $4 to $5 until its last service on June 22, 2025. We have not found any reopening-era prices in the coverage.

The renovation happened where diners don't sit

The Antioch Herald dates the building to 1925, when Floyd "Mac" McKinney built the house with his father. Contra Costa News reported in November 2025 that it was originally built in 1908, so the sources disagree on the year. In 1956 he started running a bar out of part of the home, and he sold it 17 years later. The restaurant changed hands a few times before the most recent owner bought it in 1983. A drawing of McKinney now hangs inside the front entrance.

Keeping a century-old house working as a restaurant took a lot of construction. Harrison said they "added 15 feet to the back for a bigger kitchen," added parking stalls and built two new bathrooms. In the dining room, the work was about bringing back what was already there. "We got all the smoke off the walls and added all new lighting picked out by Desiree," he said. "We kept the bar. We wrapped all the beams. We tried to keep it as original as possible."

The partners split the work along the same lines. Martinez said he did all the construction and worked on the project every day starting in November. Harrison handled the dealings with the City and laid out the plumbing and kitchen. "Nobody else was going to do it with all the cost involved," Martinez said. Harrison said they worked with City staff and "leaned on them as much as possible."

The December plans also mentioned keeping the columns and the familiar feel of the room, along with more dining space and a DoorDash pickup area. The August coverage confirms the kitchen, bathrooms, parking and card payments. It does not say whether the pickup area was built.

The operators come from down Lone Tree Way

The people running the dining room already run another Antioch restaurant. Sheri Vallero operates Mac's with her daughter, Terriane Reed, and her son, Roger Born. In December 2025, the Mercury News reported that Vallero and her family had bought the Original Mel's on Lone Tree Way earlier that year. It described her as a restaurant-industry veteran since age 18. That Mel's Diner is at 4827 Lone Tree Way.

So one family now runs two Antioch dining rooms, about a decade-old diner and a restaurant in a century-old house, under owners who made the second one's menu part of the deal.

Who came to the soft opening

The guest list at the August 4 soft opening points the same way. Among the people at the renovated bar were Mike and Elisa Van der Valk of Mike's Pastry Shop. Their shop at 1872 A St. is another long-running local business. Mike Van der Valk ran Berry's Pastry Shop from 1989 to 2004 and opened Mike's in 2009. A December 2025 profile listed strawberry chiffon cake, chocolate banana cake, strudel and cookies among its best sellers, all made from scratch.

Old Antioch businesses showed up for this reopening, and the people running Mac's come from that same group.

Before your first visit back

1. Hours. At the grand opening, Mac's announced dinner daily from 4 to 10 p.m. and lunch from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. starting Monday, August 17. We have not found any reporting since mid-August that confirms whether those hours still hold in October. Check the restaurant's Facebook or Instagram before you go.
2. Payment. The restaurant now takes debit and credit cards.
3. Parking. The renovation added parking stalls at 3100 E. 18th Street.
4. The order. Prime rib and pasta, the dinner the owners required the operators to keep.

Mac's shows how much of an old Antioch building can be kept while the rest is rebuilt around it, and that same question comes up with plenty of older homes in town. If you own one and want to know how its character and its updates affect value, Sold Buy Team can walk through it with you using recent local sales. Start with our free tool and Get Your Instant Home Valuation.