Walk into 11 Railroad Ave in Patchogue on a Saturday and the person who takes your brunch order may put down the coffee pot, pick up a microphone and open the afternoon's first number. Side Street Dive, the pizza and cocktail bar that took over the old Burgerology space a block from the train station, has turned its waitstaff into a performing cast, and what started this summer as a twice-a-week experiment now runs four days a week.

The restaurant calls the program Side Street Live and bills it as Long Island's first Broadway-inspired dining experience. The model is the one New York City tourists line up for in Times Square, where servers at Ellen's Stardust Diner belt show tunes between food runs and alumni have gone on to Broadway casts. Patchogue's version trades the diner counter for a dive bar dressed in palms, with pizzas and cocktails on the menu, and it is a five-minute walk from the Patchogue LIRR platform instead of a train ride away.

From burger joint to cabaret

The building has changed hands fast. Burgerology gave up the Railroad Avenue location, and Side Street Dive opened in its place in late winter with a straightforward pitch: pizza, cocktails and a room designed to feel like a vacation. The singing came later. In July the restaurant began staging Side Street Live on Thursday evenings and Saturday afternoons, seating guests for a full dinner or brunch while professionally trained vocalists worked the floor in aprons.

The restaurant says its cast is the real thing, including an American Idol finalist, and the show is built into the meal rather than staged beside it. Between courses the servers perform Broadway standards and pop hits, pull tables into singalongs, and fire confetti and bubble guns over the dining room. It is dinner theater without the velvet seats, and without the Manhattan parking problem.

What a week looks like now

As of this week the schedule has grown from two seatings to four days of programming. Wednesdays are Broadway trivia nights, with doors at 6 p.m. and trivia at 7 hosted by Tango Time Trivia, played out between live numbers from the staff. Thursdays and Fridays bring the full dinner experience from 5 to 10 p.m., and on Fridays the room flips at 10 into late-night karaoke, where the microphone passes from the cast to anyone brave enough to follow them. Saturdays run a Broadway brunch from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and a second dinner show from 5 to 10 p.m.

The restaurant is also holding auditions to grow the cast. In its own postings this week it put out a call for singing servers who can carry a tray and a melody at the same time, which suggests the four-day schedule is not the ceiling.

Why this corner keeps reinventing itself

Railroad Avenue sits just off Patchogue's Main Street strip, close enough to catch the village's restaurant crowd but far enough that a business there has to give people a reason to turn the corner. Burgerology bet on burgers and left. Side Street Dive's bet is that an experience travels farther than a menu, and the early evidence is on its side: the show has been drawing regional press attention, the schedule has doubled since July, and the concept has no local competition. The nearest thing like it is in Midtown.

Patchogue has spent a decade building the South Shore's densest downtown of bars, venues and restaurants, anchored by the Patchogue Theatre and a Main Street that fills on weekends. A singing-server restaurant slots into that ecosystem in a way it could not in most Long Island villages, because the audience for a night out with production value is already parking there.

If you go

Side Street Dive is at 11 Railroad Ave in Patchogue, and reservations for the Side Street Live nights are the safe play. The kitchen leans on pizzas, shareable plates and brunch dishes during the Saturday show, with cocktails throughout. For a birthday, a night out with kids who know every word of a Disney ballad, or a table of friends who would rather not choose between dinner and a show, it is a genuinely different answer to the Saturday question, and it is the only room on Long Island where the person singing the eleven o'clock number also brought your fries.