Monday, October 6, 2025

A Delightful Day in the CID

 

10/2/25 Panama Hotel Cafe

The weather forecast was iffy; rain or dry, it could go either way. Roy, Mary Jean and I decided to play it safe by meeting at the Panama Hotel Café. It’s a delightful, historic spot in the Chinatown/International District, where USk Seattle had met several times years ago (back in the day when our group was small enough that we could fit in the small café).

Designated a historic landmark, the 1910 hotel building has been transformed into a wonderful café space filled with photos, décor and artifacts about Seattle’s Japanese American community. It became well-known when the period piece novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, was published in 2009. The most interesting artifacts are some personal items that Japanese American citizens stored there when they had to evacuate their homes quickly for internment camps during World War II. Belongings that were never retrieved by their owners still remain in the hotel’s lower floor, visible through a Plexiglas window in the café floor.

Cafe decor and counter

A fun space to sketch, the café offers an unusual range of refreshments. Coming by to chat with us, owner Jan Johnson pointed out a shelf lined with bottles, noting that the café offers liquor, which is unusual in a coffee and tea shop. She told us that when she opened the Panama 25 years ago, it was the only café in Seattle to offer both high-end coffee as well as high-end tea – and the first to serve matcha. “Back then, the only tea you could get in a coffee shop was bags,” she said. “And a high-end tea shop would offer instant Folgers, if anything, to coffee drinkers.” Uniquely, the Panama offers a full range of espresso drinks and infused teas.

In addition to the usual cookies and muffins you’d expect in a café, the Panama also offers wagashi, which are traditional Japanese treats made of rice flour, sweetened bean or yam paste, and elegantly decorated and themed to the current season. I chose a matcha-flavored wagashi named “Scent of Fall” to eat with my matcha genmai-cha tea.

Miu Miu, the resident cat


The ambiance there is so cozy, comfy and fun to sketch that I could easily make it my “third place,” if only it were a little closer to home. It’s usually quiet, but the morning we met there, participants of a fairly large “breakfast club” were having a spirited discussion about current events. I could tell by the respectful way they spoke and listened to each other that these friends had been getting together regularly for a long time. (Eavesdropping as I sketched led me to deduce that they meet there every Tuesday and Thursday.) It was a truly delightful morning!

After lunch at the nearby Filipino restaurant, Kilig, where Roy helped us decipher the menu (and I enjoyed a delicious pancit and an even more delicious ube panna cotta), the afternoon turned out to be much sunnier and warmer than we expected. Not wanting to waste what could be one of the last nice days before true autumn weather hits, we went to sketch some more at Hing Hay Park. We all went home wistful that the enjoyable summer was coming to an end.

Kilig restaurant and Hing Hay Park

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