Nomzilla! Sushi Et Cetera

Been coming here since they opened. Delicious vegetarian sushi roll options. Love the fruit combos. I’ve since moved away but miss it dearly. Not even Los Angeles sushi places live up to this place. The owner is very nice too.

Nice and fresh, who doesn’t like to make their own roll too. The staff is always happy to recommend things that pair well together. Unfortunately, it has closed.

I’ve been to Nomzilla several times though only when I’m invited by my friend/​fellow sushi addict. I enjoy Nomzilla but personally it’s just not my go to sushi place. The staff is super friendly and the sushi is decent. I’ve only ever really gone with the build your own sushi option which I recommend giving a try at least once for the novelty of it. However, I think it is probably more cost effective to go with the pre-​built rolls because all of those ingredients add up pretty quickly.
Nomzilla is a cute little place with a fun atmosphere. They have a few tables outside too so it’s a great spot for a casual sushi get together.

I love this place, and have been here numerous times. They have some of the freshest sushi in Nashville, prepared however you would like it, due to their «build-​your-​own» sushi option, which I frequently use (I know it sounds odd, but salmon, cream cheese, strawberries, tempura crunch, and eel sauce make a fantastic combination). I have also tried many of their standard rolls. The California Über roll is recommended, as is the Tempura and Crunchy shrimp rolls. They even have a roll that is so spicy that you have to sign a waiver to try it (I vaguely value my taste buds, so I haven’t tried this yet).
My only complaint is that, as they are currently in the process of moving, they appear to be closed at odd times.

Just arrived in Nashville today for a short stay and found Nomzilla on a whim. It’s absolutely some of, if not the best sushi I’ve ever eaten. I’m vegan and the amount of already made vegan friendly rolls and endless amounts of create-​your-​own rolls (from type of paper, rice, fillings, sauces AND toppings) was enormous. The owner was extremely helpful with my questions about ingredients and even advised me about which sauces I should pair with my rolls.
I chose the jasmine tea for a beverage and it was great (as most hot tea usually is) and two rolls: one rice paper, white rice, mango, tofu and jalapeño with avocado on top and one seaweed paper, white rice, asparagus and cucumber roll with tempura crumble topping — all with a side of eel sauce. I mentioned I would like to try some of the hot sauces and was able to get a cup of both the ghost pepper sauce and the scorpion pepper sauce — these were some of the best and unique sauces I’ve ever had with sushi. Super hot and delicious!
All of the plates and sauce sups are disposable, but are Eco friendly and completely compostable — my tea was in a recycled, compostable cup which was great also. The other reviewer complaining about the neon décor obviously has no appreciation for unique modern branding because I thought it had a nice vibe. I will definitely return for more rolls before we leave the city in a few days!

If you are college kid (or someone who isn’t familiar with sushi), this is probably heaven for you because lets be honest it is price sensible (they have groupons and super discounts all the time), and the menu is rather straight forward and simple. Yes their service is pretty awesome too.
The thing is that for me, the sushi is only slightly above store packaged sushi at Harris Teeter. You can see right then and there as they prepare it that they use so much microwaving and straight out of the fridge action that there is no real freshness in their ingredients. Also, every time I come here it is always empty. Not sure how this place makes money. I mean, the location is great and the sushi is always well made.

Pleasantly surprised by the number of interesting choices. I stuck to the crunchy shrimp and the smoked salmon & cream cheese roll. They were delicious!!! And I didn’t have to wait long at all. Cute space and adorable logo

Great sushi, a lot of big fat pieces of salmon, crab and all these other things you want in your sushi. It’s not the cheapest place (I’m not meaning it’s expensive, either, just not the cheapest out there) but certainly very good and you get value for your money. I like the funky design as well

I first have to say that I really dig the sushi chompin godzilla that signifies Nomzilla.
I stopped by for quick take out following work and was pleased at how fast service was. I ordered the shirtaki seafood noodle bowl and it came out within 10 mins. However, there are major issues in regards to packaging hot soups here. A. I would never ever recommend anyone order take out hot soup from here. Its best just to eat it at the location or order something else. My order never truly made it home. The broth is exceptionally hot… and they package it in a cardboard bowl with a plastic container. As in, the plastic lid (not the sturdy kind from take out chinese places) melted and the soup poured all over my pants when I carried it out the store. They were super nice and tried to repackage it for me (by plastic wrapping it like 5 times). however… plastic melts… and once again I had a mess in my car. On a positive note, the portion size for the noodles was quite nice. My seafood bowl had 4 jumbo shrimp and 2 scallops. I was honestly surprised to even find scallops. I guess for almost $ 11 it was an okay deal. A bit expensive for fast food Id say.

Because sometimes on a Thursday night, you just crave a grilled duck sushi roll. AMIRIGHT? … Well, maybe it’s just me.
Placed a takeout order on the OrderAhead website, and it was ready and waiting 15 minutes later when I arrived. No line at the counter, and the two employees were both very nice.
The crunchy shrimp roll was very good (and huge!) — I think it was 10 or 11 pieces, but I had already eaten a few when I counted, so who really knows. I also had the «Quackmire» roll, which has grilled duck, asparagus, and cucumber drizzled with korean bbq sauce. Yum! The boiled edamame is about what you’d expect, I think next time I’ll try the spicy wok-​charred edamame.
As some reviewers have said, they also have a «Devil’s Nightmare» roll, which apparently requires a signed waiver. I would imagine it involves ghost peppers.
Also, I was pleased to see that they gave me lots of soy sauce and extra chopsticks in my take out container. I don’t drown my sushi in soy sauce, but I do enjoy it with my meal, and some places refuse to give you more than a couple drops of the stuff (I’m talking to you, Koto Sushi Bar). So thanks for throwing that in!

I’ve liked Nomzilla! from my first visit. The neon green dinosaur mascot is humorous — but it doesn’t influence how I feel about the establishment, I honestly have always enjoyed what I ate from here.
I love the liberties one can take — I can really make ANY kind of roll. Hey, if I don’t want stuff in a seaweed roll, I can get it over rice in a bowl. If I don’t want rice ‘cuz I’m a lo-​carby-​gal (which I am NOT) I can get sushi innards over a salad! I just love the options. I haven’t tried any of the noodles yet, but I’ll get to them eventually.
I’ve had duck in a roll, raw salmon in a rice bowl. I haven’t gone too nuts because I don’t want to risk over-​combining. Something I run into at the frozen yogurt place often…
Unilocal check-​ins earn a free Izze soda!

My second visit was better. I loved the BLT Spring Roll; however without a Groupon I might not come back. I guess that might make me a snottie foodie. It’s possible. I love sushi though so I’m picky. The sushi last visit was fresh but nothing standout. The service was fine. Probably a good quick lunchtime spot.

I was really impressed with Nomzilla. Not only can you make your own roll, but they also offer a lot of unique rolls of their own too.
I had a groupon so I got the Eel Roll and the Quackmire Roll. Gurrrrl, lemme tell ya… if you have never had sushi with grilled duck in it then you need to check your life priorities. It was delicious.
Eel is also one of my favorites so I typically have high expectations when trying it at a new sushi place. I’ll be the first to admit theirs was on point.
I will definitely be returning.

Love this take on sushi. You can customize your own roll with many of the typical Japanese classics as well as use some more Americanized ingredients such as bacon and grilled chicken. It was quick and easy and the girl taking our order was extremely helpful! I even received a free drink with my Unilocal check in. This concept of sushi is plain and simple but looks great and tastes great. I’m excited to go back and try some of their super spicy roll challenges, one requires you to sign a waiver which excites my interest!

Dropped in here yesterday.
I was greeted by the owner, and I have to say he was extremely friendly and courteous!
The shop was quaint with a nice modern setup and a japanese animation theme, which is awesome.
I’ve had the edamamme (?) before and I thought it was extremely delicious, even in a reheated state.
The menu is unique in that Nomzilla is the only sushi joint that allows you to create you own rolls from a list of ingredients. I imagine this is where the restuarant truly shines, and I regret not taking advantage of it.
Instead I went with the prefabricated recipes: The spicy tuna roll and the sweet chili chicken roll (since I’ve never had a non seafood based piece of sushi).
Each roll runs about six dollars, and is cut into eight average sized pieces. The ingredients were fresh and tasty. The only true criticism I have is that the recipes for the rolls could use more complexity, maybe an extra unconventional item per roll to bring the sushi up to par with some of the other places around town. Also, the prefabricated option list is somewhat small. I imagine the true idea is to build your own rolls here. The garnishing sauces could be a bit more inventive too. The pineapple in my chicken roll was a bit too cold, almost icy. It probably was from the bottom of a previously frozen sixth pan.
On a comical sidenote, three of the rolls use ghost chili or apparently an even hotter alternative. I cant remember the name, but the last roll on the menu (scorpion?) requires a photo id and a wavier to eat!
My girlfriend ordered one of the soups and it looked exceptional, with tons of fresh veggies that hadn’t been overcooked like many other places.
She chose a calorie free (!) noodle that actually had an interesting-​in-​a-​good-​way texture, and the flavor was great.
The food was served on disposable plates/​bowls, but they are biodegradable. this and the lighthearted atmosphere makes ir totally permissible in my opinion.
If I were to rate Nomzilla on the sushi I ate alone, I would have given only three stars. However, the rest of the menu was great, the design unique, and the customer service exceptional. So I bumped up to four.
Scoutmob has a five dollar off coupon. I recommend using it and giving it back in the tip because places like these deserve a spot in the nashville culinary market. It’s nice to see a place that doesnt take itself too seriously, but still delivers in the product.
On a final note, one of the employees rushed out the door to thank us in the street. Alot of the new places in nashville could take a lesson from this.

My husband and I just ate at Nomzilla for the first time and loved it! There was a groupon available so we decided to try something new. The employees were very friendly and helpful in making our selections, and the food came out fast.
We both had the crunchy shrimp roll, he also had the spicy tuna but substituted the pineapple for avocado. Both were very tasty and fresh. I also tried a «build it yourself» option and made a rice bowl which was great.
We also both thought the décor was cool and different then the typical sushi place.

I stumbled on to Nomzilla almost by accident. I just got out of a wonderful massage from O. liv Body Bar (seriously people, they are the best!) and wanted to continue my blissful day of self love by taking myself out to dinner. Nomzilla happened to be right across the street and I knew that they had a deal on Scout Mob that I could take advantage of, so why not? Unfortunately, there are a bunch of reasons why I should have just hopped in my car and gone somewhere else for dinner. Please, let me explain.
I went to Nomzilla around 6:30 for dinner. The place was completely empty– not a soul in sight. This is never a good sign but, eh, I was hungry and tired. The décor is, how do you say this nicely… horrendous. The color scheme vacillates between eye-​popping neon abominations and boring neutrals. The Nomzilla mascot mural near the trash cans in the second dining room was poorly done, looking more like a high school art project than an actual piece of wall art. Also, in the boring dining room there were a bunch of Nashville-​skyline-​with-​keyboards paintings, all the same, with different color schemes. These were also of high school quality. So now that I’m done taking a massive poop on the décor, let me explain what this place is about.
Nomzilla is a make your own sushi place. They offer a bunch of fish, fillings, rice, sauces and toppings for you to make the roll of your dreams. I was not feeling very creative at the moment so I decided to order off the regular menu with the rolls already put together. I’m happy they offered this for indecisive people like me.
To start I ordered an eel roll, which is normally one of my favorite go-​to sushi staples. I was taken aback that everything was served on disposable dishes. This is not eco-​friendly in the slightest and If I go to a restaurant I want to eat off real dishes and not pretend I’m at a backyard BBQ at a friends house. The roll itself was really disgusting. The eel sauce tasted really funny, like no eel sauce I’ve ever had before. It was oddly tangy and full of spices that just didn’t seem right. Does eel sauce go bad? Because that might have been what happened here. Another big issue was that this roll was ice cold. The eel must have been pre-​cooked and kept in a freezer. I have never ordered an eel roll at a sushi joint where the eel wasn’t cooked right when you ordered and was served to you warm. The hot eel-​cold rice combination is what makes the eel roll so tasty! The only way I was able to finish the roll was to cover it with wasabi, which wasn’t even that hot.
For my second dish I ordered the inari (sweet fried tofu) spring roll and it was a snooze. The inari itself lacked flavor and you couldn’t taste it mixed in with the lettuce, carrots and cucumber. I could barely see it when looking in the roll; the inari should have been more pronounced. The roll itself was also super cold, like it was kept in the fridge for a while. When you got to the bottom, the whole thing was juicy and wet, like it was defrosting and melting as I ate it. Soggy spring rolls are a no-​no. The sweet chili sauce for dipping was the same stuff you can buy at your international market straight out of the bottle. Any Vietnamese place on Charlotte Pike could make this a million times better.
I was really disappointed with Nomzilla and could not recommend this place at all. For a city in a landlocked state Nashville some pretty decent sushi joints (Samurai, Sonobana) that you should check out if you’re craving raw fish.
Honestly, I’ve had better sushi from Publix.

I had been to Nomzilla a few times before my visit yesterday and though I was always satisfied with the taste of my rolls, I felt that they had some growing pains to move through – I was hesitant to form an opinion on availability and service until they had some time to make it work. However; now they have been open for long enough and even expanded their space, which makes me feel okay about my opinion not changing.
We have had a trip to see if the «hottest» sushi roll would make our friend cringe, who doesn’t much crumble to any level of spice. The first few times we tried to get him to try it, they were closed or did not have the sauce available to make the roll. This seems to be a pattern with Nomzilla. I have been on several occasions where they diid not have ingredients to make what I had tried the visit before or what I wanted to order this time around.
We called the day before to make sure that they had the hottest sushi roll available. The person on the other end told us that they would make sure to make it in the morning… Does that mean they don’t have a menu item unless you call the day before? If it is a special roll, they should have a day dedicated to it, not have it as a regular item on the menu. We called about a tiger shrimp roll availability too (a roll I had been dying to order as it was the best that I had two visits before). They said, yes but it would take 15 minutes per roll to make. Ugh. I didn’t order it, but they were not lying about the 15 minutes per roll to make – it seemed it was not subject to that specific roll.
We were the first to come in when they opened on a Friday at 11:45am and there were 8 of us. We all ordered our sushi and many of our table didn’t get rolls until 12:30! They come out in random order and their was no system to it. A server looked closely at the roll to guess what was inside and asked the 8 of us to decide who it belonged to. Most of us sat with one roll in front us while waiting on two other to get some food before we started eating. Time passed as we starred at the table and even another table that came in after us received food before our order was completed. One roll never made it to the table and we finally got up to ask about it. The cashier (whom I believe is also the owner) sorted through is tickets and insisted it had already been served. There was one unclaimed roll on the table that no one ordered and we explained that an extra roll was served but it was not what we ordered. He again sorted through his tickets, blamed his server and made us feel like we did something wrong by accepting a roll that was not ours. He finally agreed to remake the roll since it was a roll with only one ingredient inside.
If you pay attention to my other reviews – customer service is a huge factor when I am rating places. I would have given this four stars had the service been speedier and we not experienced the dreaded «the customer is wrong». The owner should have just apologized and remade the misplaced roll instead of spending another 5 minutes of our time trying to prove he made and delivered it already. One group as we were walking out, walked out behind us saying they could not wait any longer for their food, they had to go without getting it. The group remarked as they exited that Nomzilla needed more sushi chefs, and this was an unreasonable wait time. And I agree. It is a fast casual set up and should have taken a fraction of the time it did. It took our table over and hour to even get all our food. Food served on paper plates that you order at a counter should never take that long when you are the only ones in the place.
I also agree with other reviews, the cost of the rolls for the experience was less than ideal. Some rolls range up to $ 12! My friends spent over $ 25 for their meal and left commenting they may stop at McDonalds on the way back to the office because they were still hungry – not a good sign.
In terms of the food, my shrimp rolls have always tasted good, I would gladly return had they been more affordable and served in less than 10 minutes wait. The chicken one I tried was terrible. The chicken was ice cold and the flavor was bland. The hottest sushi rolls sauce was hot in deed, but the flavor was terrible. I would likely not travel back after all this– the first experience had me noting it was the best sushi roll I had tried, but when all this adds up, I’d rather spend my time, money and hunger elsewhere.

The owner seems to be an upstanding guy. From his bio, it looks like he has a love for sushi and wanted to start a business to support his family and/​or probably pay off his school debt, which a lot of us can relate to. Taking that into consideration makes it really hard to give such a low rating. But there just a few problems that are hard look over.
Actually, to elaborate on those issues would make for a long-​winded comment. So I’m going to save that for an in-​depth article for our foodblog (your can refer to my profile for site if you’re interested).
Here’s what you need to know as the consumer: It’s a working progress. It has a good concept, but incomplete. The price doesn’t match the product.
For instance, take PF Chang’s vs. Pei Wei. To bring a lower cost product to its consumers, PF Chang’s cut out overhead and operational costs to make Pei Wei; which is why Pei Wei can offer similar type of food as PF Chang’s but at cheaper prices.
This restaurant is a fast casual operation, but you still end up paying the same amount as you would at a full-​service dine-​in sushi restaurant. If you ask the locals here if they would rather try this place or Sonobana or Samurai for the same price, they’re probably going to pick Sonobana or Samurai. Understandably, the location probably has a ridiculously high rent, which will suck the profits dry.
In regards to choices, just because combinations are unlimited doesn’t really mean that choices are. As far as traditional sushi goes, you can only have raw tuna or salmon. Regardless of how you dress it up, it’s still a choice between tuna or salmon.
I want to support local owners like this, and I believe that it is a working progress. However I have to rate it one star b/​c it’s too similar to grocery store sushi at a dine-​in restaurant price.

I recently ate lunch here… Not the best spot. I will say the positives up front: the staff was generous and welcoming, the food had good flavor, the place was new and clean, and the menu allows for a create-​your-​own sushi roll experience. That said, here’s some constructive criticism for the owners:
FOOD: The edamame was very cold, not freshly cooked, and it was served with no salt. All of the sushi ingredients were still cold when we ate; it’s like everything is kept in the fridge until needed. The soy sauce, usually kept in bottles on each table, was instead dispensed in tiny, rip-​open packets… not convenient for sit down eating. Finally, the beverages weren’t quite what you’d expect. They had some Izze soft drinks and a couple of other odd choices, but no staples like tea, coke… and no alcohol.
ENVIRONMENT: Everything in the restaurant is painted one of two vibrant neon colors: green and orange, and it’s all lit with bright white fluorescent light. It gives the feeling of what it might be like to walk into a giant neon sign. Also, there were some provisions for music in the restaurant, however nothing was playing over the speakers. That, coupled with the lack of foot traffic, made the place feel dead.