9 Best Tea Rooms & Shops in Seattle, WA

A Chinese and Taiwanese tea shop on Maynard Avenue that pours free tastings for customers working through its stock. The shelves lean hard toward oolong (23 listed) and pu-erh (17 listed), including aged pressed cakes, with black, green, jasmine and flower teas filling out the list. Teaware and accessories are sold alongside the leaf.

A Taiwanese tea shop run by Joe Hsu and Lydia Lin, who keep direct ties to growers in Taiwan. The core of the list is high-mountain oolong: Ali Shan, Da Yu Ling, Dong Ding and Tie Guan Yin in light and roasted styles. The shop is set up for sitting and drinking with staff guiding the tasting, and it stocks more in store than it lists online.

Owners Wei T Chen and Jia-Lan Huang have run Vital T Leaf since 2011, and the King St shop is built around daily tastings of loose and pressed Chinese tea, from white tea through aged pu-erh. The brand's Pike Place and Western Ave storefronts have closed; King St is the shop to visit.

The tea house on the ground floor of the Panama Hotel, built in 1910 by Japanese architect Sabro Ozasa and now a national historic landmark. It serves imported teas from China, Japan and Taiwan with pastries, and the room doubles as a small museum of Seattle's prewar Japantown, including a floor window onto belongings left in the basement by Japanese Americans sent to WWII incarceration camps.

A loose-leaf shop in Post Alley at Pike Place Market, open since 1990. Tea is sold by weight from a wall of canisters, with seasonal blends, oolongs, infusers, brewing gear and tea books. Staff will brew a cup of what is on the wall to drink on the spot.

The Fairmont Olympic, which opened in 1924, runs a scheduled afternoon tea on Fridays from 1pm and on Saturdays and Sundays from 11am, with last service at 3:30pm. Tables are booked through OpenTable, and the hotel adds a separate holiday tea in December.

A Ballard tea bar open since 2007 with more than 150 loose teas and herbals, all available to brew in house or buy in bulk. The bar pours daily sample selections and serves gongfu-style tea, whisked matcha and nitro tea, and the shop sells gongfu and matcha teaware. It keeps longer hours than most tea venues in the city.

Open since 1988 and billed by its owners as the oldest independently owned tea room in America, Queen Mary serves formal British afternoon tea with scones and crumpets on bone china. Its Tea Emporium, one block west on the south side of NE 55th St, sells tea, teaware and books, and keeps later hours than the dining room.

A tea cafe on the Ave run by Anton Lim, with a menu that covers green, black, white, rooibos and herbal teas. It is set up as a sit-down room where UW students study over a pot, and it stays open later than most tea venues in Seattle.