POULSBO — The Odin Inn closed for the year last week, but it was as busy as ever up to the final hour.

The Inn, which is run by NKHS students, has closed its doors for the rest of the school year due to renovation of the pool building. But last Thursday still saw customers searching for seats, students taking orders, and most of all, Eunice Mann overseeing it all.

Mann didn’t start the Odin Inn, but her passion for cooking — and teaching — has flavored almost every dish that has been produced there for the last 23 years.

She teaches three of the four periods the restaurant is open, and emphasizes that students do the work at the restaurant, taking orders, making batches of food, and even bringing bowls of soups and plates of fries to the customers.

But Mann is part of it, too. She peers into ovens to check on the progress of baked goods; she eyes the orders that wallpaper the doors of the kitchen’s freezers.

On the Inn’s last day of the year, she gently prodded a trio of stationary students to work by saying, “We have orders to fill.”

She will retire at the end of this school year.

Mann arrived at the district in 1979 after teaching home economics in Michigan and starting a program similar to the Odin Inn.

Mann had a sister in Oregon and had liked the northwest, so she was happy to come out to North Kitsap — and wanted to start a program like the one she had in Michigan.

“I liked what I was doing. I wanted to do it again,” Mann said.

Luckily, North Kitsap’s Odin Inn (which was named before she arrived) had begun in 1978, and Mann had a place to teach students about food and the food industry.

“This is a classroom, like English or Biology,” she recently said of the Inn and its equipment. “It’s a classroom where kids learn entry-level skills for the culinary industry. And that’s a big industry. We have students who work in delis, in grand hotels; we have students who have started their own business.”

While Mann teaches kids the basics of cooking and serving, and such practical skills as running a cash register or using a meat slicer, her teaching has gone much deeper.

She has helped developed different menus for kids to try, like low-fat menus, or meals for people with diabetes.

Her dedication to human rights matches her culinary skills; her students have attended human-rights conferences and worked with Seattle’s Orion Center, which helps homeless youth.

But it is the cooking that often reaches out to students, Mann said.

“A lot of students learn through activity,” she said. “Some students need to feel, touch, smell … they’re out of their chairs here. Some students are excited about school after they’ve been in the class awhile.”

Mann added that the students enjoy sampling the food as much as they enjoy cooking it: “They like to cook,” she said, “but they also like to eat.”

The students haven’t been the only ones to be excited about the class’s activities.

Mann will continue teaching through the year, with much of the Odin Inn’s equipment moved near the technology building and lots of classroom teaching going on.

Whether in a classroom or a restaurant, Mann will enjoy cooking and teaching.

“It’s a pretty sweet way to teach,” a smiling Mann admitted.