The D3/D7 system provides a simple holographic description of a strongly coupled gauge theory with quarks. By introducing a range of deformations of the AdS5 space a variety of familair phenomena in gauge theory can be investigated quantitatively. These include a running gauge coupling, temperature, chemical potential, and magnetic fields leading to confinement and chiral symmetry breaking, as well as bound mesons and their melting. I'll illustrate these phenomena with examples and derive the phase diagram of a chiral symmetry breaking theory. Finally I shall discuss how hadronization can be modelled in such set ups and propose that rho meson emission should be described by a simple EM radiation problem.