Nashville Food Friday: Nomzilla

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 decor 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 decor, 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.