Tea, coffee and Japanese pastries
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605 S Main St International District
206 / 223-9242 website
-pastry selection varies day-to-day
-English and (often) Japanese spoken
-steps at entrance and in inside
Interview with owner, Jan Johnson
"My name is Jan Johnson. I am the current caretaker of the Panama Hotel. I bought it in 1985, I believe. I bought this building to save it for history and education.”
The Panama Hotel is a vibrant remnant of what was one once Seattle’s thriving Japantown.
"The architect who built the building was the first Asian architect in Seattle. He was Japanese: Saburo Osaza. And he went back to Japan--I'm not really clear as to when, but he did this building in 1910 but I think he returned to Japan prior to the completion of the building…and he brought back the construction with with 2x4" to Japan. Which I think is amazing. There were some professors that came in from a university in Japan with some researchers and they're studying Saburo Osaza. And they think this is the last remaining commercial building that he did. He died at the age of 36 in Tokyo. So the building is, I think, becoming more significant."
In a space on the building's ground floor, Jan created the Panama Hotel Tea and Coffee House.
"I wanted to build a place where people could come. And not so much like a restaurant, but much more casual, where you gather--like bathhouses for instance. and to have tea and coffee together at that time--I mean a high-end tea and a high-end coffee--was not really heard of. And it's not traditionally Japanese style. I opened it in 2001, but I started it in 1998, I believe--the construction. But I did it myself, designed it and built it."
The cafe acts as a living archive and interpretation center: old maps and photos of the historic Japantown line the walls, and through a small window in the floor you can look down and see stacks of suitcases, left in the hotel's basement by Japanese families sent to internment camps during World War, and never reclaimed. Jan frequently hosts tour groups, and makes a point of hiring bilingual staff.
That attention to culturally-sensitive detail extends to the range of sweets on offer.
"In this process of the history and education, I think the pastries, for instance the manju, is very significant of Japanese culture. Every culture had major food items, just like languages and architecture, and I think that with the Japanese the manju, mochi, these are the real highlighted pastries that come with the culture. When you think of manju you think of Japanese, or mochi. and the largest mochi producer, historically, was the Sagamiya, in the intersection of 6th and main. People still talk about it."
The Panama has become a kind of incubator for new businesses specializing in Japanese sweets. It was the first retail outlet for Tokara, the Phinney Ridge confectioner who makes beautiful Kyoto-style bean paste sweets.
"I thought she had an incredible product. She's an artisan. There's not many people who do what she does, and I don't know if people understand that. she studied seventeen years in total, i think to make that pastry, and it's very high-end, significant of the culture. It's a story, that pastry. The stories behind it is also very cultural, and every time she brings in a batch, if I'm there I ask that the staffing be aware of the story of each item because it's so important to when you're eating.
"And then Setsuko was kind of like the same thing when she started baking, and now she's becoming very well known with her product. But her shortbread cookies I've always had since she started."
Whether traditional or contemporary, Jan sees the Japanese-style pastries at the Panama Hotel tea and coffee house as symbols of resilience.
"I think it's very important, the whole connection with all of it: the pastries, the building, the history, the languages, the everything. I think it's important to keep the differences alive, for education, and history. Otherwise it's just going to be too boring!"
