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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

Café Django to be replaced by new brewpub

Café Django will no longer serve students and families its ethnic cuisine and live jazz music. A new pub, Quaff ON!, will open its doors in March or April of this year.

Adam McGlothlin said the term quaff means “drinking heartily and with gusto.”

“Your job is to drink it,” said McGlothlin, who is in charge of sales and marketing for the new pub. “It’s about enjoying your beer, not just chugging it. It’s more than a name, it’s who we are.”

“Quaff on” is the mantra of the pub’s parent company, the Big Woods Brewing
Company, located in Brown County, Ind., he said.

Not naming Quaff ON! after its predecessor reflects the differences in the cultures of the locales, McGlothlin said.

Big Woods relates to Brown County, where the culture is different and more rustic, he said. Quaff ON! is more relatable to the hip counterculture atmosphere of Bloomington.

McGlothlin said he hopes the pub will serve not just the student population of Bloomington, but the entire community.

He said they hope to expand the pub’s range beyond the borders of Indiana in the future.

“It’s gonna be a little more, dare I say, elegant,” said Steve Tuttle, the pub’s kitchen manager.

Quaff ON! will feature the meals one would expect to find in a similar-style restaurant, Tuttle said.

From Shepard’s pie-style dishes to sandwiches to full-size entrees, the restaurant will try to please a large audience.

When the pub is opened, Tuttle said he will seek to “marry the beer and the food” by pairing meals with certain beers.

The main goal, however, is to spotlight the many craft beers Quaff ON! will offer by using them as ingredients in the meals, he said.

Half of the beers on tap will be Quaff ON! or Big Woods beer, and the other half will showcase both local and global craft beers, McGlothlin said.

While the pub plans to allow admittance of people under age 21, it will probably not allow anyone under the age of 18, Tuttle said.

McGlothlin said he plans for the pub to be an alternative to bar hopping.

“This is a place to have a few beers with friends, enjoy a high-quality meal and have a good time,” he said.

Though Café Django is gone, some students said they remember enjoying the jazz-themed restaurant.

Freshman Sarah Gage, a trombone performance major in the Jacobs School of Music, recalled that many students in the jazz department performed at the former café.

“It was a great venue for anyone, whether you were in a group or ensemble or not,” Gage said. “It was really neat because it gave students the opportunity to express themselves.”

Gage and sophomore Daion Morton both said the food was great.

Hearing jazz music with Brazilian influences was a new and exciting experience, Morton said.

“That kind of diversity is uncommon in Bloomington,” he said.

Morton said he disapproves of the potential age restrictions.

“It would be unfortunate if there are age restrictions,” he said. “Café Django was a great spot for students to hang out.”

Follow reporter Brian Seymour on Twitter @briseymo.

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