This one-of-a-kind Mexican seafood restaurant just opened in midtown Sacramento

Benjy Egel
·4 min read

Ernesto Delgado’s new restaurant isn’t quite like anything else in Sacramento’s dining scene — especially when it comes to the method of cooking.

Octopus Baja is Delgado’s ode to historic spice trade routes, a Mexican seafood concept at 2731 K St. in midtown Sacramento that is unafraid to draw from Japanese, Peruvian and European cuisines.

Chef Joel Siegel’s menu has twisted and turned like tentacles since a soft opening began on Valentine’s Day, introducing and tweaking a series of dishes to develop more permanent fixtures.

The current roster includes a bluefin tuna tostada ($12) topped with chipotle aioli and corn microgreens, and mahi-mahi aguachile bearing sesame seeds and a wakame seaweed salad ($15.50) about which Siegel raves.

“The dish is very green, very bright, but then it has like a little palate refresher through it with a seaweed salad,” Siegel said. “So you pick up on the sesame, you pick up on the crunch of the wakame. It’s a nice takeaway for that dish, for sure.”

Chipotle salmon ($22) is served with charred broccoli and fresh-cut mango salsa over quinoa cooked in the fat of housemade chorizo and bacon. All seafood is wild-caught and sourced from Sunh Fish, a popular vendor on Broadway.

Another salsa was pounded in a molcajete, but featured San Marzano tomatoes more commonly seen in pizza and pasta sauces. A small bar leans on tequila, mezcal and rum to craft cocktails such as coconut mojitos or prickly pear margaritas, with all food items eventually linking to recommended beverage pairings.

Delgado is Sacramento’s most famous Mexican restaurateur, the visionary behind Mayahuel and La Cosecha downtown and Mesa Mercado in Carmichael (he also bought Sal’s Tacos in 2018, more than 40 years after the West Sacramento institution initially opened). Siegel has been Mayahuel’s general manager for the past four years after initially meeting Delgado in the Culinary Institute of America.

An exterior view of Octopus Baja on Friday. The restaurant on K Street in midtown Sacramento is the latest offering by restaurateur Ernesto Delgado.
An exterior view of Octopus Baja on Friday. The restaurant on K Street in midtown Sacramento is the latest offering by restaurateur Ernesto Delgado.

A sister concept called Octopus Peru will soon open at 980 Ninth St. in downtown Sacramento’s Park Tower, with more of a focus on ceviche and other Peruvian dishes, Siegel said. Another Octopus location will open in La Ciudad, Delgado’s planned culinary market at 424 C St. in West Sacramento.

“It’s a three-plan project called Octopus, all connected by the same food but with a different story,” Delgado said.

Octopus Baja is open from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. and 5-9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. and 5-10 p.m. Friday, 3-10 p.m. Saturday and closed Sunday and Monday, with happy hour from 3-6 p.m. when open.

At the forefront of gas-free, induction cooking

Octopus Baja opened in a 2,000-square foot former Blimpie sandwich shop after the owners of Midtown’s Cantina Alley scrapped their plans for a market in that space last year. With no cooking range to speak of, there seemed to be two options: install a costly cookware system (and its associated ventilation, if using gas), or be restricted to a raw bar with no-cook ingredients.

Instead, Delgado outfitted Octopus Baja with Rational’s iCombi Pro after attending a product demonstration in November. A high-utility, self-cleaning electric combination oven that can be pre-programmed and left virtually unattended, it’s being used to sear shrimp or roast king trumpet mushrooms at Octopus Baja.

An octopus sits in a broth that it was cooked in for more than an hour in an iCombi Pro oven during a November demonstration at commercial kitchen rental space Fantastic Kitchen in Sacramento.
An octopus sits in a broth that it was cooked in for more than an hour in an iCombi Pro oven during a November demonstration at commercial kitchen rental space Fantastic Kitchen in Sacramento.

Some traditional Mexican chefs have bristled at California’s transition to induction cooking, saying the high heat from gas stoves is necessary to produce the cuisine’s rich flavors.

Yet Delgado will outfit all three Octopus concepts with iCombiPro’s, becoming one of the first Sacramento-area restaurateurs to embrace the device. Franquette, a French-inspired bakery in West Sacramento, also uses one, co-owner Brad Cecchi confirmed in a text message.

Each Octopus location will focus more on cured and raw fish than concepts such as Oaxaca, Delgado’s planned Oak Park restaurant at 3400 Broadway that may debut later this year. While that restaurant will revolve around tlayudas, crispy tortillas sometimes dubbed “Mexican pizzas,” the Octopuses will rely on citrus juice and vinegar as much as the iCombi Pro.

“The concept here is that the fire is in the bowl,” Delgado said. “You’re cooking in the blender, you’re cooking in the bowl, you’re curing and adding acid. The fact that it’s fresh and healthy is truly the goal.”