As you probably expected anyway, I can’t visit Seattle without sampling the local afternoon tea offerings. Several places do an afternoon tea in the city. Eventually, I settle on The George, which is the brasserie of the Fairmont Olympia Hotel on 4th and Seneca.

Location

The Fairmont Olympia is an enormous building in the typical style of the Fairmont Hotels that sits in the centre of downtown Seattle. The George is located off the hotel’s main lobby.

The Staff & Service

Our reservation is for 15h00, which is the last sitting for afternoon tea before the kitchen closes until the evening. We’re seen to straight away and taken to our table. There are two waiters serving our table, both of which are rather funny and very friendly. They take our orders for the tea and tell us the food will be along shortly.

The tea selection is small, but certainly covers the essentials. I have the Earl Grey, as usual, and it is steeped to perfection, which is not something you get often.

The Afternoon Tea

The afternoon tea starts with an amuse bouche of whipped cream with berries, poached pear and cardamom syrup.

The food is all brought out at the same time on a three-tier étagère, with the sweets at the top, savouries in the middle and scones at the bottom. Our waiter recommends we start with the scones while they’re still warm. But you can’t do that, so we start with the savouries instead, as one does.

There is just one scone per person. They are served with cream, lemon curd, and berry jam. The scones are fluffy and have a rich, buttery taste.

The sweets are fairly small, which I rather appreciate. I prefer the savouries over the sweets, so it’s nice not to have to overdo it with the sugar. Having said that, no sooner have we started on the sweets, one of our waiters wheels a cart to our table with differet types of biscuits and cakes, and invites us to choose as many as we like. I decline and tell him I’m not sure I’m going to manage to finish what we already have.

Once we’re done, we’re brought the bill and two boxes of packaged black tea with the hotel’s compliments as a farewell gift, which is a nice gesture. As we get up to leave, our waiters come to thank us and wish us a good rest of our vacation.

Conclusion

The afternoon tea at The George was unexpectedly good. I rather enjoyed it. I think what surprised me the most was that the tea was steeped to perfection – full of the elegant aromatics of the subtle bergamot, but without even the slightest hint of bitterness. I also thought the meal was nicely balanced, so that I didn’t feel utterly bloated by the time we finished.