Queen Mary Tea Room & Restaurant — Restaurant in Seattle

TLDR: Dress up! Get that Afternoon Tea! Great place to snack and chat. Free tea samples while you dine!

Tips: This place provides an excellent excuse to dress up! Casual attire is fine but heck, why not dress up? Steeping tea too long can cause it to become bitter!

Notice that your silverware is actually made of silver! Take time to appreciate the decor as well. Beware of the hanging teacups! (You'll see).

Did you have a look at the sugar? You can't possibly miss the colored crystals! Very pretty and fun to add--be warned though, it will turn your tea into a funky color so take a picture first before you add the sugar! I had a nice rose pink colored tea that turned a sad dirt brown when I added the blue sugar to it.

Menu is very descriptive and they serve tea items and well as entrees! There is a long list of teas with excellent descriptions so be prepared if you are indecisive! If you order Afternoon Tea, then I recommend that you take a picture of the list so you remember what is what when it comes to you. Your server will also point out each item but I find it easier to remember if I have text reference (especially when writing Yelp reviews, teehee).

Service: wait to be seated, order at the table, you will be watered, table service, check brought to you, leftovers will be boxed for you. While you dine, a waitress will come by several times with little glasses of teas to sample, which I think is absolutely great! I've always wanted to try other teas and sampling this way is much better than ordering and regretting.

Orchard Berry Tea: Whoa! The smell is SO good. It smells like a bowl of freshly made jam! The flavor is light and tangy. Very refreshing! It also have a lovely pink hue to it.

Empress Chai Tea: OMG. I think I have found THE tea for me. This one was given as a sample and I think I fell in love right then and there. It had a very smooth texture and the aftertaste left me wanting more. I ended up buying a bag for myself.

Afternoon Tea: Wow! You get a a whole tea pot of your choice of tea and yes, that entire half page of things listed is what is included in your three tier tower of goodies. Keep in mind that this is a per person tier. It might not be enough to fill you up if you share. If you aren't very hungry and are looking for more of a snack, then you can share. When your tea is delivered, your server will let you know how long to steep your tea for and you can flip the handy dandy sand timer. When your tower is delivered, the server will point out and name each item.

There are just so many items for the Afternoon Tea! Here's what I liked the most: The Pork Roll is to die for. I wish they had a tier of just these by themselves. It's like a breaded pork dumpling. Yum! The Scones taste really good with the Passion Fruit Jam! Tomato Bisque is such a small amount but oh so very good. Dip that bread into (after you've buttered it of course) and let the flavors sink into your mouth. Any and all the desserts. You will not be disappointed. The fruit is a great addition and is refreshing between tiers.

Afternoon tea is fantastic but my personal opinion is that it's great as one of these "one time experiences" not only because of the price but because not all items were the best things I've ever had. There were a few items here and there that I could have done without or could have been better for the price you paid. But I'll let you be the judge of what you like and don't like.

If you like any of the teas, they do sell them just down the road and across the street at Queen Mary's...

I’m editing to add: Queen Mary followed up with us. The mistake appears that a cancellation was made, and the tea room deleted our reservation instead of the correct one. It was not an Open Table mistake. The Queen offered to call us at the 1st cancellation that worked for our schedule. We ended up going on Christmas Eve, and it was absolutely lovely as it usually is. And, as it turned out, we were able to bring my 7 year old’s best friend, which made up for her tears a few weeks ago. She is a happy girl now. It ended up being a lovely and relaxing way to start the holiday. The Queen Mary still reigns supreme as the best tea place in Seattle.

Original review: We are long time Queen Mary fans, and would normally give a 5 star review. But today we had the worst customer service experience I have ever had at a restaurant. Their online reservation system, Open Table, cancelled our reservation. I had an email confirmation of our reservation from weeks ago, which the hostess told me appeared to be correct. Then, I had an Open Table email cancelling our reservation that arrived yesterday, which I unfortunately missed until I arrived and was told we did not have a reservation. They were fully booked all day. The hostess insisted it was “no one’s fault,” & offered to reserve another day. They could not accommodate our group another day that worked for us this month. I needed to feed my kids as it was lunch time. Other options offered were a cup of tea to go (great, but that doesn’t get food in my kid’s tummies, so no thank you) or to sit at a table for 10 minutes between other seatings. (Obviously that would not be enough time to eat anything or drink tea. What would we do, take in the ambiance? Yes, it’s fun ambiance, but not to be rushed like that, and really better with tea and yummy food. And, again, my kids will be left hungry.) As my 7 year old was crying in disappointment, and I was scrambling to figure out a new plan to feed our group, I was repeatedly told “it’s nobody’s fault” and sent on my way. Well, it is the Queen Mary’s fault for using an online reservation system the hostess told me had been glitchy lately. It was known that Open Table was not working correctly. I would not want them to have cancelled anyone else to make space for us, but I am saddened and angry that other options were not given, (even after the hostess called the owner!) Other options that could have been offered: 1. Tell me that you will stop using Open Table and take accountability for using Open Table as a vendor. 2. Offer to put together a full tea meal to go (we’d pay, and I know this was possible during COVID closures so it can be done. Not the same, but we could have lived with it). 3. A token discount for our next visit. (Not about the money, but the acknowledgement of what a problem your vendor caused). 4. Offer to put us on a waitlist and call us should there be any future cancellations on days we had available… Any or all of those actions would have been appreciated. But, instead, I was sent on my way, holding my crying daughter outside the tea room in the rain… Sigh… I suppose we’ll be back. To others— buyer beware — call to make reservations, DO NOT book online until they switch to a new vendor for online reservations. And certainly be willing to gamble with poor customer service if...

Wow! This was truly a wonderful unique experience. Every month I take my 14 year old daughter on a date. She loves drinking tea and I happened to find this place through a lot of google searching trying to find a tea making class. Reservations are definitely required. The website says they can accommodate walk-ins if there is availability. I highly recommend making a reservation instead.

They serve breakfast and brunch, however we opted to have their afternoon tea. To begin we were each asked to choose a tea off of a really expansive tea menu. The tea is served loosely infused in a kettle.

After that, we received a bowl of three different flavored sherbets. This was meant to cleanse our palate. After that a three tiered tower of food was brought to our table. It included savory and sweet foods. There were two of each food item on the tower. They included things like cookies and brownies the kind of sweet things that you would expect. It also had this delicious soup, cucumber sandwiches, chicken almond sandwiches. So many different kinds of fruit and a delicious cream to dip them in, and so much more.

You can see the entire menu for the afternoon tea on their website. It was plenty of food to fill us up. We weren’t able to finish all our tea, so they gave us a large to-go cup to take the rest with us.

The service was impeccable. Our waitress was on top of things. She was lovely, very knowledgeable, and always seemed to be right there when we needed her. One thing that I didn’t like so much was how cramped the dining room is. When we got our table, it was so close to our neighbors table that I had to scoot it over a little because it was touching the chair of the table next to us. The table itself was very tiny, and we had to do a lot of moving things around to be able to fit everything on the table so it would’ve been nicer if the table was slightly bigger and we had a little bit more space around us. However, the dining room area as a whole is not very big.

When we initially arrived, we accidentally went to the gift shop, thinking it was the restaurant. They’re just a little bit down the street from each other and they both have things for sale.

The afternoon tea came to around $150 (without tip) so this experience was definitely more on the expensive side. I also took a look at their breakfast and brunch menu and noticed that most of the food items started around $22 and went up from there. We chose to do afternoon tea during the weekday which is cheaper than the weekend.

Overall it was a fantastic experience and I am really happy that I found this place and made wonderful memories with my daughter. She absolutely loved!!

I would definitely go back again, but only for...