‘Penn State’s living room.’ What to expect from dining options at the Nittany Lion Inn
The newly renovated Nittany Lion Inn will reopen in the fall and with it will come new dining options for not just hotel guests but Happy Valley residents.
The inn previously had two different food and beverage outlets but when it reopens, it will have four options, Gary Brandeis, CEO of Scholar Hotels which owns the inn, told the Centre Daily Times Tuesday. They added a coffee shop and cafe, a French brasserie and cocktail lounge, and a bar.
“We want the Nittany Lion Inn to be … Penn State’s living room,” Brandeis said, adding that everyone is welcome to enjoy its offerings.
The coffee shop and cafe, Dear Joe:, will be near the lobby. It will be open 12-15 hours a day and serve coffee and breakfast items, as well as other types of non-alcoholic drinks, smoothies, grab-n-go sandwiches and salads throughout the day. Dear Joe: will be where the Barnes and Noble gift shop previously was, Brandeis said. That gift shop will still be at the inn, but in a different location.
Triplett’s — previously Whiskers — is a casual bar. Its name is a toast to Wallace “Wally” Triplett, a Penn State football player in the mid-1940s and the first Black student to earn a varsity letter on the team, and the first to be drafted by the National Football League.
When Penn State was scheduled to play against Miami in 1946, Miami officials asked Penn State to leave their Black players at home, according to the Centre County Historical Society. Instead, the team voted to skip the game. Two years later, Penn State was invited to play in the Cotton Bowl and a similar situation occurred. The team captain, Steve Suhey, said, “We are Penn State,” and didn’t meet with the Cotton Bowl officials about it.
Brandeis said he met with Triplett’s family to share what what they wanted to do, and his family gave them permission to rename the space for him and to honor his legacy.
Triplett’s will have cocktails, beer and wine, he said, and he envisions it to have a more casual menu with items such as wings, burgers and flatbreads.
The old dining space will now be a French brasserie, Lionne. Brandeis said Lionne — which is French for lion — will be a high-end French restaurant with a “great wine cellar.”
Although menus haven’t been created yet, the website states it will blend “time-honored flavors of French cuisine with the contemporary twists of modern American dishes.”
They’re in the process of interviewing for an executive chef for the hotel, so while themes for the restaurant and the food/beverage outlets have been selected, the specific menus have not. Once the executive chef is hired, they’ll create the menu.
The equally high-end cocktail lounge, 1855 lounge, will have a direct walkway in and out of Lionne. Its website promises an “intimate space where the focus is on the rich and complex world of scotch and whiskey.”
“We took the old alumni lounge and created the 1855 Lounge, which is a cocktail lounge where you can have a drink before or after dinner, or just hang out in that space. It’s a little bit more refined, a little bit higher end than what the Triplett’s space is going to be,” Brandeis said.
The famed hotel at 200 W. Park Ave., State College, has undergone extensive renovations and upgrades since closing to visitors in 2020, with more than $10 million expected to be invested into the building. Interior renderings of the renovations were made public Monday for the first time since the project began.
The inn will reopen just as Penn State’s football season kicks off. Its grand opening will be Sept. 2, five days before the home opener against Bowling Green.
Despite the website crashing as the Nittany Lion Inn was set to begin accepting reservations Monday afternoon, Brandeis said they were able to get a direct booking link out on social media. Between that and eventually getting the website running, they had a “tremendous response” with hundreds of reservations made for the fall.
“We’re thrilled. It makes us feel good about what we’re doing and how we approached it.”
