Originally published Saturday, February 28, 1998

By JON HAHN  
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

A good cigar is only a good cigar, but a good smoked salmon you can inhale.

Which is why Jensen's Old Fashioned Smokehouse Inc. is prospering on the Greenwood Avenue ridge overlooking Crown Hill, Greenwood and Puget Sound. Like fine cigars, many of these smoked fish end their days in the finer food outlets such as Larry's Markets and QFCs.

But Broadview is where these fish are schooled in the fine alder-smoked art of tasting good. Right next door to that unmistakable neon fish sign (Sandy's Sea Foods) that many mistake for Jensen's retail outlet. Jensen's began as a little hole-in-the-wall retail business back in 1985 and has prospered despite a decline in fish stocks and a corresponding rise in fish prices.

"Boy, there were days when I first started here as a one-man operation and had to stay open late just hoping a customer would walk in," said Mike Jensen, sole proprietor, so to speak.

A Bremerton-born guy with a University of Washington business degree, Mike was aiming at a bank or stock brokerage job in the early 1980s. "But jobs weren't all that plentiful then," he noted, "and those that were didn't pay as much as the night-stocking job I had at QFC while I was in college. So I kept right on working at QFC."

A hard worker with a prudent investment strategy, Mike had already poured his savings from after-school jobs into a fixer-upper house in Bremerton. "It was only $2,000, and the money I got from renting out bedrooms paid the mortgage," he said.

His father, Walt, urged him to take a white-collar job. But Dad Jensen, a former supermarket meat manager, also had taught his sons "everything he knew about meat- and fish-smoking," son Mike said. "And one day, a salesman at my dad's shop in Bremerton told me about a small market for sale in Seattle, and this was the place."

He sold his Bremerton house and was able to plunk a down payment into the Greenwood Avenue North property on which his business has prospered.

The shop has grown from about 1,100 square feet to about 2,500 square feet and recently, with acquisition of the old Rolling Pin Bakery property, to 6,500 square feet and eight employees. Mike can take a minute to reflect on all this in his upstairs office, perhaps rolling his eyes a bit when he recalls that selling smoked fish, bacon, hams and turkeys brought in as little as $11.39 a day.

About 85 percent of the business now is smoked fish, and most of that individual customers, Mike said proudly. "Some have been with me from the start . . . people who catch their own fish and bring it in for custom-smoking."

When he bought the tiny meat market and installed his first two smokers, he could do only 250 pounds of fish and meat, respectively. Now he can smoke about a ton of meat in three smokers.

"The wholesale business allows us to continue the custom-smoking thing," Mike said. "Nineteen of every 20 people who come in with their own fish want 'hot smoked' product in pieces," he said. "Hot" smoking involves cooking the fish in heat and smoke to a peak holding temperature of 145 degrees. "Cold" smoking, such as the thinly sliced Nova lox, involves intricately timed exposures to smoke without high heat.

Customers come from Ballard to Point Barrow, Alaska, and in-between, hauling their own salmon, trout, cod, sturgeon and other species. Some fish are snagged in Washington rivers, some have been sitting in home freezers for a year, and some are freshly caught and air-freighted Alaska king salmon brought by repeat customers.

For about $2.60 per pound, in-the-door weight ("I always tell them to cut off the head first."), they get custom-smoked fish. Options include hot or cold smoking, low-salt, extra sugar or garlic-pepper.

If you just walk in off Greenwood Avenue North, you can pay as little as $7.99 per pound for smoked chum salmon tail sections to $12.99 for chunks of king salmon or sockeye fillets. The tasty long belly meat strips of king salmon retail for $14.99 per pound. Increasingly rare specialties such as smoked Alaska black cod disappear from the cases within hours of smoking, even at supply-and-demand prices in the $20 range.

Jensen's also has smoked hams, turkeys, bacons, beef and salmon jerky. And Mike is gearing his expansion to other production possibilities, including a smoked salmon mousse(!).

"My father is real proud of us -- even though he wanted me to go into banking or stocks," Mike said. "When he saw how determined I was about this, he pitched in and taught me everything he knew about smoked fish and meats and sausage. He helped me set up the smokers . . . everything."

There are no more $11.39 days at Jensen's, at 10520 Greenwood Ave. N., just north of the intersection of Greenwood, Holman Road Northwest and 105th Street North. Hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Saturday.

And even though they smoke tons of fish on the premises, you must leave your cigar outside.

Jon Hahn is a staff columnist who writes three times a week in the P-I.