  It has been suggested that some strongly correlated matter might be
understood qualitatively in terms of liquid crystalline phases intervening
between the Fermi gas and the Wigner crystal or Mott insulator. We propose a
tunable realisation of this soft quantum matter physics in an ultra-cold gas.
It uses optical lattices and dipolar interactions to realise a particularly
simple model. Our analysis reveals a rich phase diagram featuring a
meta-nematic transition where the Fermi liquid changes dimensionality; a
smectic phase (stripes); and a crystalline, `checkerboard' phase.
