Having a yen for Jens' celebrating 20 years of smashing success.

• Author: Kalytiak, Tracy
• Position: ANNIVERSARIES - Jens Hansen - Jens' Restaurant

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Jens Hansen and his wife were taking a walk near their Midtown condo when they noticed a vacant sandwich shop nestled in a blue-roofed strip mall at 36th and Arctic.

"I looked in the window," Hansen said. "I figured there was nobody else there, I might as well come in."

That year, 1988, wasn't the most propitious time for the Crow's Nest's renowned executive chef to launch his namesake new business. "It was like the times of '29; it was at the very low," Hansen chuckled.

OIL BLUES, YENS' BLOOMS

Not long before the Hansens took that first peek into the empty space that would become Jens' Restaurant, the price of oil had crept up from an alarming $6 a barrel to a still-meager $15 a barrel. A full-blown real estate recession gripped the city, with the construction industry flat on its back and lavishly paid oil company executives being shipped far away from the Anchorage restaurants they would otherwise have patronized.

But the city's economic plight didn't deter Hansen. He began setting up his own restaurant in the down-at-the-heels strip mall. He and his wife, Annelise, his boyhood sweetheart, bought a new range hood, flatware and dishes, found other kitchen equipment secondhand, let their friends help paint the walls and lay carpet, and scored a hostess stand and sconces from the swank-but-defunct Tower Club.

There was no shortage of customers from the day Jens' opened, because Hansen--a Danish immigrant who had served as sous-chef, executive chef and food and beverage manager for the Hotel Captain Cook and other Hickel hotels--brought with him scores of friends he had fed well during his years there.

Patrick Corkery, a financial advisor for Merrill Lynch, first met Hansen because his wife was Hotel Captain Cook's food and beverage manager during Hansen's tenure there as executive chef.

Corkery grew closer to Hansen after Jens' opened.

"That was the beginning of a lot of trouble," Corkery laughed. "Jens and I, we run around together. I've been to Denmark with him in 1994 and 2004 for his 25th and 35th wedding anniversaries."

Corkery said the opening of Jens' was a kind of phenomenon.

"Anchorage was in an economic funk and he opened a restaurant in the middle of that," Corkery said. "I was at a meeting when we were fighting to finish the performing arts center. A lot of people were naysayers on the PAC, thought they should not even finish building it because there were a lot of cost overruns. I remember Greg Cart...