‘We feel like this place is home.’ Lupita’s set to open eatery in downtown State College
A family-owned Mexican restaurant plans to open its third location in Centre County in nearly as many years.
Lupita’s Authentic Mexican Food is set to open in March at 312 W. Beaver Ave. in downtown State College, the former home of John’s Shanghai in the Palmerton Building.
“We’ve been in the area for 20 years,” co-owner Emilio Lopez Ramirez said Tuesday. “We feel like this place is home. The community feels like family to us.”
Fellow co-owner Maria Guadalupe Rojas Orozco and her husband emigrated in 2001 from their hometown in Oaxaca, a city in southern Mexico.
They opened the first Lupita’s in 2019 inside the Uni-Mart at 3180 W. College Ave. in Ferguson Township, followed by a second location that opened in 2021 at 200 Mill St. in Milesburg.
The downtown State College location would be the largest of three. It’s set to offer the restaurant’s most expansive menu yet.
“We have so many (Penn State) students as customers, and they’ve been asking when we’re going to try moving downtown. Local families do, too,” Lopez Ramirez said. “That’s why we started to look around. We’ve been trying to find the right location.”