First rodeo for this combo

Japanese-Texan fusion restaurant and bar still trying to figure out its accent

Fusion food is the eighth wonder of the world, the union of cultures around a common table. Sometimes by migration and adaptation, sometimes by invasion and occupation. Fusion food gave the world Italian spaghetti by way of China. It gave us the Vietnamese banh mi by way of France. But it also gave us taco pizza and sushi burritos.

In the spring, Tokyo Cowboy promised its own brand of River Walk fusion from San Antonio developer Chris Hill and Austin chef and restaurateur Ben Cachila. The branding elaborated the concept across social platforms: a whiskey diner where Southern comfort meets Japanese street food and Tokyo meets Texas.

All I could think was, “Why would Tokyo want to meet Texas?” Call it a fusion of Austin optimism and San Antonio skepticism, the grafting of catchy boutique ideas in a climate where those kinds of things don’t grow naturally.

Put an honest Japanese izakaya in a restored old grande dame of a building downtown, and I’m there. Do I need yuzu in my margarita and brisket in my egg rolls to remind me that I’m still in South Texas? Tokyo Cowboy is the answer to a question nobody was asking.

That answer is yes, no and maybe.

Yes for a dining space that draws light from windows on three sides, playing across wooden screens and cool velvet banquettes in a long shotgun room that feels as old as your nan’s house and Ikea-fresh at the same time. It’s a trope-free zone, blessedly barren of Westernized “Asian” design markers. The kitsch factor is reserved for Hill’s tiki bar downstairs, a thatched hideout called Hugman’s Oasis, a symbiotic dose of excess to balance Tokyo Cowboy’s cosmopolitan reserve.

And the answer is yes for scattered regions of a menu divided into small, medium and large plates, with a subsection of “sushi handhelds.” A double-patty cheeseburger earned its “Sukiyaki” badge with a side dish of salty-sweet dashi broth fortified with an egg yolk for dipping, with an optional side of good fries in a bowl wearing an unwieldy Fiesta crown of bonito flakes flickering in the breeze. Pinwheels of color animated a housemade pickle plate of cauliflower, squash, cabbage, cherry tomatoes and showoff watermelon radishes, at once a palate cleanser and a sensory starter pistol.

The fusion food conceit translated well to a Vietnamese-Cajun dish of prawns laid out, antennae and all, across tangy-spicy barbecue sauce, and again with a simple shredded vegetable salad that proved anything but simple, with cabbage, herbs and peanuts exhaling the funky esters of a crisp Thai salad.

The promise of apple curry gravy drew me to a crispy pork chop. Fried pork and curry are a Japanese izakaya standby, as common as chicken-fried steak and just as satisfying here, razored in precise slices, each one a symphony of crunch, fat, umami and curry. And as much as I loathe the idea of imitation crab — krab with k — I liked the rich sweetness of a sushi-style krab roll with melted ponzu butter made with real crab.

But the answer was a hard no for fried chicken bleeding at the bone, a beautiful plate with a pixie dusting of furikake seasoning and radiant pools of pickled vegetables, torpedoed by a lapse in basic kitchen craft. The same kind of lapse turned corn waffles into hard croutons under an overly fussy dress of pork belly and poached shrimp, with bonito flakes waving like flags of surrender.

It seems as though Tokyo Cowboy invested most of its

fusion capital in the sushi subsection, a loose collection of Google Earth rolls without a navigation subprogram. Where I could look past the awkward construct of a salmon poke “taco” because the fish was OK, I couldn’t get past the taste of tired, mushy fish in another handroll with a “leche de tigre” imprint. And neither worked as a handheld, because the boat

of seaweed holding each one together was like chewing through a wet suit. And the Hawaiian charm of a Spam musubi roll was lost in loosely packed bites that put the magical mystery meat too far down in the flavor mix.

Now we come to the maybes, and that’s where the brisket egg roll comes in, the one thing trying the hardest to channel Texas and the South and San Antonio into one accent. The kind of accent where Hollywood puts an Australian wearing a cowboy hat in “Yellowstone.”

It’s not quite right, but it’s not all the way wrong. The brisket could have been any protein, really, playing backup for more interesting pickled collard greens. I liked the crispy outside, but the crosscut left the insides on display like an alien autopsy.

That’s a cosmetic point. The bigger point is that the egg roll fills the same roll as Tokyo Cowboy’s hot chicken chile dumplings and crispy deviled eggs: They’re entry points for something from the bar, a bar that combines the flash and

color appropriate to River

Walk tourist cocktails with the thought process of serious bar craft.

Rye, Bénédictine and yuzu bitters rose like aromatherapy from a twist on an old-fashioned called Slums of Shaolin, and the minimalist Liquid Swords suggested a gin martini with a plum wine bouquet. The flash came from a generic Hawaiian Punch tiki thing in a porcelain cat called the Six Demon Bag and a Japanese whisky concoction called Cobra Kai, a drink dyed as purple as Prince’s smoking jacket by ube, a starchy root that made the drink taste like a potato smoothie.

It could have gone a different way. The original idea for the Tokyo Cowboy space was a Vietnamese cafe called House of Má, a concept that came and went in the blink of a business disagreement, something with less of a fusion mentality, something with fewer gray areas to fill.

As a fusion of Japanese and Texan anything, Tokyo Cowboy gets bucked off before the eight-second buzzer. But it works as a Japanese izakaya with decent food, professional service and a chill sense of escape from the chaos outside. And sometimes that’s enough for the River Walk rodeo.

Photos by Mike Sutter/Staff A brisket egg roll — brisket, pickled collard greens and queso asadero — falls somewhere between not quite right and not completely wrong.

Leche de tigre sushi handroll, front, featured tired, mushy fish, while a salmon poke taco was just awkward.

Hard corn waffles are topped with an overly fussy mix of pork belly and shrimp.

A crispy fried pork chop is topped with apple curry gravy and pickled cabbage. Appetizers include a housemade pickle plate.

Fried chicken with furikake seasoning and pickled vegetables was lovely but undercooked.

The Sukiyaki Burger with cheese, shallots, braised onions, dashi jus with an egg yolk for dipping and fries hit the mark.