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| - Cleveland has secretly nurtured the "mom & pop" coffee shop for years--Kokopelli's Coffee & Tea, Phoenix Coffee, Arabica, and others that have come and gone. Enter the newest cafe in the hippest neighborhood: Erie Island Coffee Co. on East 4th Street.
The restaurant took the space of a former leasing office, but its difficult to tell at first. The decor is reminiscent of a cedar wood, handmade tackle shop turned coffee shop in Vermillion or Chautauqua or other similar boating town. The barrista is far down a corridor of tables and chairs. On a Sunday late morning, there were about a dozen people, but the place looked like a ghost town!
The coffee selection is good and the medium roast was surprisingly high quality. My wife had a latte and after our New Zealand honeymoon, we were missing not having the impressive foam art. Now, Phoenix coffee has a few people who are really impressive, but it was nice to see they finally had some competition in town!
We had Cavs tickets and wanted a quick bite in addition to our caffeination, so we split a veggie omelet breakfast sandwich. First time out, the egg was cold, but on repeat panini-fication, it was very tasty!
Two notable and unique additions were the bar seating flanking the entrance windows and the Fox 8 news camera. The bar seating is nice on a (albeit rare) sunny day in Cleveland and great for people watching, and if you like Fox 8 news, you may see my wife making faces into the live camera feed between Erie Island Coffee and Fox 8 for recording testimonials, editorials, and other miscellaneous drunken slurred comments after stumbling out of Wonderbar (across the street)
Welcome this new caffeination station on the East 4th strip!
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