Robb Walsh + Bryan Caswell + Bill Floyd = Reef Gone Tex-Mex?

By now, most people have heard the news that our own former food critic, Robb Walsh, is partnering with Bryan Caswell and Bill Floyd — the team behind Reef, Stella Sola and Little Big’s — to open a Tex-Mex joint in Montrose. But not just anywhere in Montrose: in the old but newly refurbished Tower Theater, the tenancy for which has been widely speculated for months.

Of course, as anyone who reads Eating…Our Words on a regular basis knows, our commenters feel very strongly about two things:

Their undying love for Robb Walsh, the man who blazed a trail for Tex-Mex aficionados everywhere and elevated the cuisine to far more appreciated levels than ever before.
And their equal amount of hatred for any venture having to do with Caswell or Floyd (or Anvil, but that’s a whole other can of worms).

The latter has always confounded us, as Caswell and Floyd are responsible for creating some of the best restaurants in Houston and are pretty nice guys to boot.

That said, this partnership is — as far as our commenters are concerned — is a little like Rosemary Woodhouse getting knocked up by the Satanic cult that lived next door to her in the Bramford.

So what does this mean for people who now have to reconcile the fact that their favorite food writer and their most hated restaurateurs have formed an unholy alliance? Mostly, it just means that we can probably expect one of the best Tex-Mex restaurants in town when the yet-to-be-named establishments opens in January 2011.

Since Felix died a rather ignominious death back in March 2008 after 60 years in business, Montrose has been without a truly delicious, truly authentic Tex-Mex restaurant. There are high hopes that Walsh’s partnership with Caswell and Floyd will be a renaissance of sorts for enchilada and queso lovers in the neighborhood. Moreover, with this great amassing of talent, expect the restaurant to either do one of two things: implode under the weight of so many heavyweights in one ring, or elevate Tex-Mex to truly world-class levels.

We’re betting on the latter.