The Diner on College Avenue has been serving State College since 1934 and occupies the kind of comfortable, unimprovable niche that only very old diners manage. It is open 24 hours, 365 days a year, serves breakfast all day, and operates with the efficient warmth of a place that has fed millions of people and has no need to prove anything. On football weekends and during finals week it can be packed, but the line moves.
The food is solid American diner — omelets, pancakes, club sandwiches, soups made in-house, and pies that rotate with the seasons. Nothing will surprise you, but everything will be exactly what you wanted. The staff are famously friendly and many have worked there for years. It is the kind of institution that Penn State graduates remember with real affection decades later, and its consistency is its virtue.