When you’re a worker whose shift ends around midnight, you have only two hours to decompress before the city shuts down. And when you’re after food, drink, and a scene, there’s no time to dillydally. Welcome to the postwork world of the restaurant business. Wired after a night spent catering to our food-obsessed locals’ every whim, the front-of-the-house people (servers, hosts, sommeliers, and maîtres d’) exit the city’s top restaurants with fistfuls of cash burning a hole in their pockets. So they head to SoMa’s slick Oola and grab a cozy booth or a seat at the hoppin’ bar.

A watering hole and refueling station for the service industry since it opened in September 2004, Oola draws them in with equal parts grub and booze. Chef Ola Fendert has a huge industry fan base for his modern take on restaurant classics like burgers and Caesar salad. Watermelon cosmopolitans are shaken, champagne and pinot start flowing, and you can bet when the clock strikes 2, the party isn’t ending—it’s just moving to someone’s living room.