A Lovely Cafe Opens Tomorrow in the Folger Shakespeare Library

The Folger Shakespeare Library may have missed an opportunity by not naming its new eatery As You Like it Cafe (as we suggested), but a cafe by any other name still looks as sweet.

Quill & Crumb (that name got the most votes in a public call for ideas) opens tomorrow in the newly renovated library’s gorgeous, wood-clad Great Hall. It marks the final stage of an $80.5 revamping that makes the Folger’s collections more accessible to the public.

 “The café has been the missing piece in the story of the new Folger experience,” the library’s chief financial officer, Ruth Taylor Kidd, wrote in a press release. “Since we reopened the building in June, people have congregated in the Great Hall to work or meet with friends.”

Quill & Crumb will function as a museum cafe during the library’s daytime hours, furnishing visitors with hot cocoa, lavender-blackberry financiers, and salmon gravlax brioche toast after they’ve looked at the First Folios. On weekends and evenings when the theater is hosting performances, the cafe will stay open to serve beer, wine, cocktails, and snacks.

The kitchen at Quill & Crumb is run by Constellation Culinary Group, specialists in museum cafes who also created the dining spaces at Hillwood Estate and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. 

The menu is vaguely English: the “English” Waldorf salad is made with Stilton cheese and shallot vinaigrette, and Harney & Sons teas can be accompanied by tea sandwiches and pastries on a triple-tiered afternoon tea stand. Shareable charcuterie boards, quiches, and open-faced tartines round out the food offerings. A floral signature coffee drink, the Ophelia’s Bloom, is made with espresso, elderflower-lavender syrup, and pistachio milk. 

Quill & Crumb will be open to the general public, not just to the library visitors who have secured pay-what-you-wish timed entry tickets. But if you haven’t visited the revamped Folger yet, the promise of tea and snacks in a Hogwartian hall may be just the excuse you need to check out the well-designed new Shakespeare exhibitions. 

Ike Allen

Assistant Editor