Ayawaska Hilltop — Restaurant in Novato

Ayawaska Hilltop is a Peruvian restaurant in Novato, California, located in a historic building that has been a local landmark since 1892. We have wanted to try their food for over two years. Finally, we visited for a late lunch/early dinner on a beautiful afternoon. We sat outside to enjoy the view over a short wall beside our table. The restaurant is on top of a hill and has housed various businesses over the years, with Ayawaska opening in June 2021. This is the owners' second restaurant; they had success with the first one in Petaluma. They offer authentic Peruvian cuisine with a modern twist.

The food at Ayawaska Hilltop reflects Peru's rich culinary history. It combines flavors from indigenous, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and French cooking. The menu includes many popular dishes. Ceviche is a classic Peruvian dish made with fresh fish cured in a citrus marinade called "leche de tigre." It usually comes with sweet potato and Peruvian corn. We started with ceviche clasico, and I had a Pisco Sour to relax and enjoy the food and the view. For those unfamiliar, a pisco sour is a cocktail made with pisco (a type of brandy), lime juice, egg white, and bitters. This version was a bit sweeter than I like, but I added a few ice cubes to fix that!

The table service was excellent. The staff was friendly and answered our questions quickly. They delivered everything we asked for during our visit. The restaurant space is large and beautiful. The bar section is well-designed and is great for groups enjoying drinks and meals.

For a heartier meal, we ordered Lomo Saltado, a traditional stir-fry with marinated beef tenderloin, onions, tomatoes, and cilantro, served with French fries and rice. The meat was high-quality and cooked perfectly, and everything else on the plate was fresh and well-prepared.

We finished with Tres Leches, a classic Latin American sponge cake soaked in three types of milk: sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, and heavy cream, making it moist and rich. It is usually topped with whipped cream or meringue. The Ayawaska version was excellent, not too sweet or soft.

In short, Ayawaska Hilltop is worth a visit. It has great food, friendly service, and a relaxing view. If you go, try to sit outside around sunset, start with the ceviche, share the Lomo Saltado or another hearty dish, and save room for the Tres Leches....

I would’ve loved to give this place a better review because the drinks and food was amazing, but the manager Raquel ruined the whole experience for us which prompted the bad review.

I had came here for my birthday and was excited to check this place out. We were seated fairly quickly in the patio, and started to look at the menu. Raquel came over to take our drink orders and we let her know we were ready to order appetizers and our entrees. She took our drink orders and appetizers, we were about to start telling her our entrees when she proceeded to walk away. We were in shock!

When she dropped off our drink she just left them and walked away, despite us telling her we were ready to order our entrees once again. They have these cool blocks with different color depending on what you are needing, so we pressed the “service” button on the block which turned it green. We noticed that Raquel was helping all the tables around but not us, despite the block being green for a good 5 minutes and clearly visible . She comes over to the table next to us, takes their order and starts to walk away. So we called her attention and told her we were ready to order for a 3rd time, which seemed to inconvenience her.

When our food was dropped off by a different person, we asked him if it was possible to change our waiter since we had been having a horrible experience with Raquel. A couple of minutes later we had Daniela come over and told us she was going to take care of us going forward, asked about what had happened and we proceeded to explain the situation. She was very apologetic and understanding. DANIELA was amazing she constantly checked on us, made sure everything was good with our food and drinks, even offered us dessert. If she had been our waiter from the beginning we would’ve definitely loved this place and gone back.

It’s very disappointing knowing that they have a manager with such bad...

This is my new favorite restaurant! Definitely one of Novato's finest.

I'll start by saying it is beautiful and nicely detailed. The owner(s) and staff clearly know what they are doing and have nice taste. As a designer I really appreciate that aspect of the experience.

The Peruvian style menu/cuisine is also a nice addition to a neighborhood dominated by mediocre to decent predictable offerings (I'll still eat a taco any day of the week though lol). The menu selections are full of flavor and so delicious that it's really easy to make yourself uncomfortable...Like i did.

Let's talk drinks (haha)...

The bar is really nice (like the rest of the restaurant) and offers really unique and what I would think are authentic Peruvian drinks. I'm not super familiar with peruvian culture so I'm taking their word for it. We tried a couple rounds of their Pisco drinks and was really delighted with them. I would love to go back and try others.

Finally, the service was really good. Again, not knowing much about peruvian cuisine and culture I asked a lot of questions and our server was really informative and pointed us to some great selections. I'm willing to bet that everything is good there though.

I will definitely go back to test that theory and you should too!

Edit 04/02/23:

I took the wife here for V-day and it had a nice vibe to it. The staff were all wearing nice attire and they were giving out roses to the ladies. It was a nice touch. They had a band that was pretty cool too.

At a later time I took the wife out to lunch and we shared a bunch of plates. Great stuff! I highly recommend the veggie empanadas. The steak ones were amazing too. We finished off with a tuna ceviche which was killer! Dont forget the...