I think I just found my new favorite restaurant in Nashville. I know that’s a bold statement after one dinner, but I genuinely can’t remember the last time I left a restaurant this excited about basically everything I ate. Noko had the kind of menu where I kept taking another bite and thinking, okay, this is another favorite.
We started with drinks, including the Lipstick Marks, which was Bella’s pick. It smelled incredible, and she absolutely loved it. It’s also one of Noko’s most popular drinks, so apparently she knew what she was doing. I went with The Hero, their non-alcoholic option, and it was really good. I’m always happy when a restaurant puts actual thought into its non-alcoholic drinks instead of treating them like an afterthought.
Then the food started coming, and this is where Noko really won me over.
The watermelon salad with lemon vinaigrette, feta, and mint was fresh and bright, which was a nice way to start. With it came the tuna crispy rice with spicy tuna, Serrano, and eel sauce. There was a really good balance happening here — refreshing from the watermelon salad, with enough heat from the tuna crispy rice to keep things interesting.
The East Side Shrimp was one of my standouts. Think bang-bang shrimp, but with mixed greens and gochujang, and somehow that combination just worked. The gochujang gave it a depth and kick that made me want to keep going back for another bite. And trust me, I did.
The dumplings were another favorite, with beef, sweet soy, and chili oil. I could have happily eaten an entire order of these myself. And then there were the Szechuan green beans with oyster sauce and lemongrass chili. I don’t even like green beans, and I really enjoyed these. So there’s that.
But the L.A. Galbi? That was my dish.
Noko serves bone-in black angus short rib with pickled onions and garlic soy, and the meat was incredibly tender. The sauce was fantastic, and I will fully admit that I started hogging this part of the meal. If you’re sharing, you may want to establish some boundaries ahead of time because I apparently did not.
We also cooked the A5 Wagyu teppanyaki ourselves, which was just plain fun. It’s served with truffle butter, black volcanic salt, and pink Himalayan salt, and getting to cook the wagyu yourself made it feel like part of the experience rather than just another dish arriving at the table. The truffle butter and salt were our favorite pairing with it.
And because apparently we had not eaten enough, we finished with dessert. The ube gelato and Thai coconut gelato were both excellent, and then there was the pineapple whip. That’s Noko’s take on the classic theme park treat. It was such a fun way to end the meal.
But here’s the thing about Noko: I don’t think there was a single dish I was disappointed by. There were dishes I liked, dishes I really liked, and then a few that I would order again without even thinking about it. That’s a pretty impressive batting average for one dinner.
I also loved that the meal felt playful without the food becoming gimmicky. There were bold flavors, heat, sweetness, freshness, great textures, and plenty of little details that made each dish its own thing.
So yes, I’m going to say it: Noko might be my new favorite restaurant in Nashville.
