The Erie Hotel & Restaurant — Restaurant in City of Port Jervis

This place would be more aptly named if it was "The Erie Restaurant & Hotel" instead of the reverse. The restaurant is definitely the more prominent business. I patronized both, staying over a night at the hotel and eating dinner there that night. I give the restaurant a 4 rating, but the hotel gets a 3, thereby placing the overall rating in the 3 range.

The restaurant is a typical American-style tavern with a largely conventional menu. I was very pleased with my bbq ribs and mashed potato small plate. There are also larger entries with more sides and possibly larger portions. The bar is well stocked and the service was attentive and, considering the busyness of the place, prompt.

As for the hotel, the description "a blast from the past" would seem appropriate. However it is not clear to me that the hotel is typical of how hotels or boarding houses were in the historic past. OTOH, staying there is decidedly different from a typical stay at a modern hotel or motor inn.

For starters, there is no pullup area for checking in. There is no parking designated at all for the hotel or the restaurant. It is on the street or in the municipal parking lot, which is on the other side of a public square area directly across the street. There is no lobby or reception area; you have to check in at the restaurant, literally at the cash register at the end of the bar. The hotel is totally separate and you can't get in without the keys (not cards). There is no accessible entrance or elevator; the outdoor key leads to a long steep stairway that goes up to the rooms. But the keys were a problem.

I couldn't get my outdoor key to work. I had parked and taken all my baggage out of the car after getting the keys and parking, but I could not get in, so I went back into the restaurant and told them, lugging my baggage awkwardly with me. This led to many strained looks among the workers, but the proprietor emerged. He explained that the lock was new, but he had trouble himself with it before getting the door to open. He also told me parking in the lot in the plaza next to the hotel was OK for checking in, that his brother owned that and it would be fine, even though posted signs and other people in his employ indicated otherwise.

Make note of that parking convenience if you stay here, but by now I had parked for the night. My concern over the key led me to leave the door ajar every time I went out and luckily it was always open upon my return. I didn't want to bother the owner again if I had trouble; he was very busy in the restaurant. Oh, and if you are figuring a restaurant attached to a hotel must serve breakfast, it doesn't. The restaurant is lunch and dinner only.

The rooms are small and there are no phones in the rooms, so I saw no way to contact staff in the event of any emergency (there were none). The beds were comfortable though, and the TVs were very big. Be warned before getting in the shower that the shampoo tubes have sealed covers that I didn't discover until I was already soaking wet and had removed the cap. I had to get out of the shower and puncture it with the prong of a back scratcher because I couldn't get it off in the shower.

The benefit of staying here instead of one of the conventional lodges in Matamoras or Milford, PA, just a few miles away is to be able to roam the central part of this historic town at night, and since I may never pass that way again, I consider it worth having done that, in spite of some inconveniences. There are renovated historic buildings around the town square and a modern design fountain in the middle of the square. It's no thriving metropolis but there was decent traffic on the streets on a Friday night in spite of some rain. Since the purpose of the trip was to attend a funeral in the Poconos for my last blood-related aunt (or uncle), I liked the association with the distant past. It fit thematically...

One of my toxic traits is that I judge books by their covers; I also do that with restaurants, and it burned me here. I stopped by on Saturday afternoon with one of my top-tier chums for a post-Port Jervis exploration/walk nip, deciding that out of all of the places we'd walked and/or driven by, this looked the most intriguing and certainly the most historic. One brief moment of validation occurred before we even entered - after walking through the downtown area and encountering pretty much a ghost town, we found a ton of locals in the outdoor patio/seating area here having a rollicking good time. Pretty decent endorsement, but it was quickly downhill from there.

As soon as you walk in, you can tell that the majority of ye olde charm has been replaced; for instance, there's some wood paneling over the bar area that's relatively new - I was expecting something that looked pretty historic inside but in my opinion that wasn't the case. I'm not sure how much of a negative that necessarily is, but if you're walking into an establishment like this expecting to be transported to the 1890s, you're going to be disappointed. There's definitely some history, but it's not going to conjure up handlebar mustaches and victrolas.

I ordered the Port Old-Fashioned off the cocktail menu; I was a little leery because it cited mulled oranges, but beyond that the description was dictionary definition. The drink itself was not. As you can see from the accompanying picture, the cocktail was practically red; I can't say for sure because I didn't witness the preparation, but it certainly looked and tasted as if it had Fireball in it rather than straight-up Bourbon. Really strange, and made it morph into a kegger drink for me. And the mulled oranges were definitely a mistake; I knew what I was getting into in that regard, so that part of the experience is certainly on me, but there's a reason this drink is supposed to have an orange peel essentially as a garnish and not a full-on part of the beverage. Really odd and I hate to say it, but probably the worst Old-Fashioned I've ever had.

We had a young female bartender who was very nice/hospitable, which is the only reason this isn't a dumpster fire one-star review. She was the only one behind the bar, which was decently packed, and held her own. Our visit was relatively brief - we stopped for just the one drink before heading home across the border - but had no issues service-wise. We were able to order promptly, and received our beverages shortly thereafter. Unfortunately as mentioned, the actual drink was pretty bad, and I'd strongly recommend additional training in that capacity. Some of the intangibles are there, so I think this could be rectified.

The Port Jervis residents clearly like this place a lot, so I have to assume they're staying away from the cocktail I had and enjoying either other drinks or the food (which neither of us sampled). And the price point is reasonable as well - I think my drink was $12 - but you ARE getting what you pay for. My recommendation? Head over to Jersey and drive the 29 minutes to the Walpack Inn, which is literally never on the way to anything except in this instance, and has much better menu options and legit...

First of all, let me say I am a 61-year old male who was in Port Jervis on business which will flavor some of this review. I had stayed in another hotel 10 miles away from Port Jervis on a Thursday night, but had car trouble the next day which required my car to be in the shop overnight. So Friday night I decided to stay at the Erie Hotel, which was very convenient to the repair shop.

I ate two dinners at the Erie (Thursday and Friday), both of them the largest cut (and it was large) of prime rib they had, and the food was great.

The beer was even better, as they had eight craft beers on tap as well as some good "national" brands. The back-bar was great, carved from wood, and the atmosphere was also good. The staff and the clientele were very friendly.

Friday night I stayed at the hotel. I asked for a quiet room, but unfortunately the only one left was on the first floor, right at the front of the building, right over the door to the restaurant/bar where the patrons would congregate to smoke cigarettes and talk very loudly.

Also unfortunately (for me) it was Friday night and they had live music. While the web site talks about a kitchen closing time of 10 P.M. and the sign outside talks about a closing time of 11 P.M., the band was still playing loudly (I could feel the vibrations of the base in my pillow) at 1:30 A.M. Saturday morning.

After the band finished they were playing the house music system, which was still very audible in my room, but after I went downstairs and politely complained at 2 A.M. they turned it down enough that (with earplugs) I could get to sleep.

Normally I would not have minded and would have joined in the fun (the band was actually pretty good), but I was tired, and I had asked for a quiet room, which should have clued the staff member to say "Sir, I think you might want to look some other place". I was able to sleep only four hours.

The room and bath were very clean, and the bed was comfortable but the room itself was small (as others have mentioned). I regretted having no desk of any type to put my laptop on while I read email. Yes, they had wireless. I do not know if the WiFi reached to the top floor of the hotel, but it worked fine in my room.

A good breakfast diner was one-half mile away (15 minute stroll).

Bottom line: Probably most nights the Erie would have been a great sleep for the money (half the price of my other hotel room), and having an extensive menu and great beers at the same place you are staying is also good. Particularly if they are craft beers of higher-than-normal alcohol (which they were).

If I was not expecting to get up early to try and get my car "in gear" and continue my business, I probably would have loved staying up to hear the band play until 2 A.M. After all, it was a Friday night and only old cranks like me might have to get up early the next day instead of cuddling with a significant someone in a bed to a decent time of the morning.

If you are a couple and "antiquing", a night or two in the Erie would probably be right...