AUSTIN, Tex. — Tyson Cole got hooked on the original Japanese version of “Iron Chef” in the early 1990s, after taking a job as a dishwasher and server at a sushi restaurant here in his adopted hometown.

“I’d never had food like that in my entire life,” recalled Mr. Cole, 47, who is now one of the city’s premier chefs. “I couldn’t imagine anything more interesting.”

Or less typical of Austin. The sun-baked city he had settled into in his early 20s was synonymous with Tex-Mex and barbecue.

Today, Japanese restaurants are flourishing here. Matthew Odam, the restaurant critic of The Austin American-Statesman, included six on his most recent list of the area’s top 25 places to eat — a notable showing in a landlocked city where people of Japanese descent make up only 0.2 percent of the population, according to 2016 census data. Last year, Kemuri Tatsu-ya, which calls itself a “Texas izakaya,” was named one of country’s best new restaurants by critics at GQ, Eater and Bon Appétit.