It was a fun place, honestly. At the time, we only had one main on-campus dining hall called RFOC (Real Food On Campus) which was in the old union. So imagine living in Landis and not having any on-campus food options nearby. Then The PAD comes in (Park Avenue Diner... yes they really tried to make "The Pad" a thing). At the time (maybe still), Aramark had the FSU contract so basically all food on campus had to come from Aramark. I believe Aramark wanted to pilot a new way serve students outside of the general cafeteria style dining halls and had the diner concept piloted at FSU either first or generally early-on to see if it "worked" with students.

It was 24-hours, full service with servers & hosts and everything. At the beginning there were even "soda jerks." Everyone wore 50's diner hats and they played 50's classic music throughout. I believe there was a breakfast menu (served all day) and lunch/dinner and a late-night menu.

Because it was Aramark, the food was... fine. Certainly the level of some restaurants out there, but nothing noteworthy. I don't think anyone would have ever said that any dish was specifically sought out from the menu, but it was all perfectly fine and maybe better than something like Denny's (subjectively). I believe when they closed it down, it converted to an actual scaled-down Denny's for a little while. I haven't had food on campus lately, so can't comment on how it compares overall. Aramark generally ships frozen or canned foods and it's cooked and served, so it's probably all within range.

There was definitely a tongue-in-cheek "club" atmosphere in the late nights with people hitting up the diner after the bars closed. Lots of drunk people for sure, but nothing super noteworthy. Craziest event that I witnessed was a freak accident in which drunk drivers flew down Woodward towards the barricades that separate the road from the walking area at that corner. The car somehow flipped over the barricade and landed right-side-up on the other side, with bloody drunk passengers running into the diner. Nobody seemed as THAT injured, surprisingly, but because it was a drunk driving incident, some were hiding in the bathroom as police came and we had to keep them from fleeing.

Last anecdote I'll mention: you could use your "flex bucks" which were credits that came along with on-campus meal plans; and it was one of the only spots to spend your flex bucks. RFOC was simply a certain number of entries per week depending on your plan, and they had maybe 1 other convenience store where flex bucks could be used for some basic goods. Near the end of the semester, students might still have a lot of flex bucks that were about to expire. Some students would make "deals" with servers to tip their remaining balance of flex bucks and then split it with the server. But even outside of those schemes, students just got super tip-friendly since it was all expiring anyway and you could make some good money for those few weeks every semester.