They call it a vibe. It’s also a phenomenon.

Anyone who’s been on social media since Lola’s Dining Room and Hi/Lo Cocktail Lounge opened Nov. 7 on Madison’s North Side knows it’s almost impossible for anyone to visit without posting evidence.

It’s a marketer’s dream.

The atmosphere feels like a dimly lit 1960s supper club, even though it’s not one, and when paired with hip, groovy music — think Al Green, Sly & The Family Stone, Parliament Funkadelic — it’s intoxicating.

From the drink menu, the citrusy Here Comes the Neighborhood ($12) with dark rum, cinnamon syrup, lime and amaretto, was fantastic, but seasonal, so it’s off the menu now. A Wisco old fashioned ($12) with brandy and a house mix was too fizzy for me.

The menu describes Lola’s as “Wisconsin fancy” and a “love letter to the low brow,” and on it you will find an elevated chili dog, cheeseburger and chicken sandwich. 

I bypassed those options in favor of the wonderful prosciutto pizza ($19), which was cut into squares, had a crisp crust, and was generous with the prosciutto. The other elements worked well together: mozzarella, ricotta, homemade tomato sauce, and particularly a drizzle of hot honey. 

The menu also has three pasta dishes, and the rich and spicy dandan peanut noodles ($14) are the way to go, with thin Chinese wheat noodles and plenty of spicy chili oil and ground pork.

Midnight pasta ($13) is another good choice, bucatini noodles covered in a sauce made with anchovies, capers, garlic, lemon, black pepper and SarVecchio.

Co-owner/chef Evan Dannells said he started out with whole anchovies, but encountered some pushback, so now he blends them first. “I like a lot of anchovy in my pasta,” he said.

To start, the deviled eggs ($12) didn’t let me down, the yolk mixture artistically whipped up high and made with Widmer’s brick cheese, from Theresa, Wisconsin, 60 miles northeast of Madison. They came topped with black sesame seeds, caramelized Parmesan and gochugaru (ground Korean chili powder similar to crushed red pepper flakes).

The colorful chopped salad ($10) was pure joy, punctuated by SarVecchio cheese crisps. The other elements worked perfectly, too: kale, broccoli, pepitas and daikon radish, tossed with a restrained buttermilk dressing.

Lola’s beer cheese soup ($9) is interesting, and benefitted from chunks of mustard pretzel acting like croutons. The menu calls it “Chevan’s world famous beer cheese,” an inside joke from when Dannells used to work at Merchant and had a sous chef who kept calling him “chef.”

He said he didn’t need the honorifics and just wanted to be called “Evan.” As Dannells tried to break him of the habit, the sous chef would get part way through “chef” before switching to “Evan,” hence “Chevan.”

“It’s not world famous at all. It was just Matt being cheeky,” Dannells said about Matt Gerding, who along with his wife, Tori Gerding, owns Lola’s with him.

The reason the food menu has so many interesting takes on familiar dishes prepared so well is that Dannells has an impressive skill set, best proven by his exceptional 4-year-old French-inspired restaurant Cadre on University Avenue.

Matt Gerding’s bona fides are in the music business, where he recently ended a 20-year career. He spent six years as co-president of FPC Live and is co-owner of the Majestic Theatre property, but no longer runs the music venue.

Lola’s is a hi-fi or high-fidelity bar, which Gerding said means it has the truest and most authentic audio equipment that’s as close as it comes to recorded, studio music.

There’s a turntable and records in the corner of the main bar area and a rotating cast of Madison’s best-known DJs take shifts spinning vinyl.

The music piped into the back room, where I sat both times, once next to a wall of classic album covers, sounded extraordinary, and was at just the right volume so you could still carry on a conversation.

Lola’s is named after the still-working 87-year-old owner of the Tom Cat Lounge in tiny St. Nazianz in Manitowoc County, where Tori grew up. 

The Madison restaurant doesn’t take reservations, and the wait for a table can be long, even, we found, on a rainy Friday night right before Christmas.

Matt Gerding said typically on Sundays and Mondays, customers can get a table with relative ease from 4 to 6 p.m.

He said on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, the restaurant can have 90-minute waits during the prime dinner hour, but customers can usually get a table or bar seat between 4 and 4:30 p.m.

The two meals I’ve had ended with an Ancora cookie, both terrific. The first was the chocolate peppermint cream cookie ($5) topped with a delicious frosting. The second, an Oreo milkshake cookie ($5), tasted like it sounds and was super crispy.

“Tori makes them herself, and she knows what she’s doing,” our server said about the cookies.

She most certainly does. After all, Tori owns Ancora bakery and cafe two doors down from Lola’s, as well as two others in Madison.

Dannells knows what he’s doing with the food.

Gerding knows what he’s doing with the sound.

It’s a great team going to great lengths to raise Madison’s hipster profile.

And every time I see another post about Lola’s online, I wish I were back there.