Interstate Beer

Interstate Beer brings a local cafe in Erie, the sort of address you give a friend without a second thought. Coffee here is less an event than a punctuation mark in the day, which is its own kind of achievement. It does the unglamorous work of being open and being good, day after day, without asking for credit. It is one stop in the broader coffee culture of the United States, the kind that reveals itself one neighborhood at a time.

It is the kind of place where you can sit a while, and nobody rushes you toward the door. What it lacks in polish it tends to make up for in character, which is what keeps regulars coming back. Expect the easy, unforced character of an independent spot: coffee made without ceremony and a room that fills with regulars.

In Erie, Interstate Beer is the kind of stop that makes more sense the closer you already are. The surrounding blocks give it the steady foot traffic that keeps a coffee counter honest. Easy to reach and easy to like, it makes a sensible stop on the way to most things. The coffee stops that last tend to be the ones you stop thinking about and just use, and this reads like one of them.