Maïté, star of the Mousquetaires cuisine, has died

She popularized southwestern cuisine on the small screen, with her naturalness and outspokenness. Knocking out live eels or cutting up chickens in front of the lens was no problem for the woman who stayed on the air for fourteen years. Maïté, whose real name was Marie-Thérèse Ordonez, died at the age of 86.

She was born on June 2, 1938. Marie-Thérèse Ordonez, known as Maïté, left her Landes land and her family on the night of December 20 to 21, at the age of 86. The information, revealed by ActuLandes, was confirmed to France 3 Aquitaine by the mayor of Rions des Landes, Laurent Civel.

Impossible to forget his powerful voice, his strong Landes accent and his colorful personality. Maïté, was an emblematic figure of the small screen in the 80s and 90s. Her culinary show “La Cuisine des Mousquetaires” was first broadcast on FR3 Aquitaine, then on FR3 National and finally, given the success of the program, on French-speaking branches internationally between 1983 and 1995.

“We wanted to do the complete opposite of what had already been seen. We took used utensils, a rustic setting, a fireplace and a non-professional stove” says the director of the show, Patrice Bellot. It was he who discovered and convinced Maïté to participate in the adventure.

At the time, she cooked voluntarily for the rugby team of her native village, Rion-des-Landes. “I participated in one of these meals where there were a hundred people after a match, says Patrice Bellot, I saw a person arriving singing dacquoise with other women volunteers”

It clicked. She was the cook we were looking for for our broadcast project.

Patrice Bellot

Director of the cuisine of the Mousquetaires

An unexpected proposition for this Landes figure, aged at the time of 45 years, not always an easy journey. Maïté left school at 14, worked as a “maid” in Paris, returned home, got married, had a child and worked at the SNCF for 23 years.

On the air, supported by Micheline Banzet-Lawton, she cooks as in life, products from her Gascon region with spontaneity, good humor and naturalness: quail with grapes, foie gras in all its forms, Landes chicken, veal, beef, game, porcini mushrooms, flambéed Armagnac…

To the question “what do you think new cuisine? “ , she replied “It’s a horror! It's even shameful, served on large plates, not even buttered“. His determination to overcome a recalcitrant eel by knocking it out, still brings joy to television rebroadcasts and social networks today.

Five years after the launch of Cuisine des Mousquetaires, she decided to open her restaurant in Rion, “Chez Maïté”. It has the same success as the show.

In the 90s, her popularity brought her to the greatest chefs, opening the doors to the 7th art (she played in particular in “The fabulous destiny of Mrs. Petlet” by Camille de Casabianca with Jean-Pierre Darroussin et Michèle Laroque) and allows him to publish numerous culinary works.

After Cuisine des Mousquetaires, she launched the show “A Table” which ended in 1999. She opened a second restaurant, still in Rion-des-Landes, then began to withdraw from business in the 2000s.She is enjoying her retirement and her family” will testify Camille, one of his granddaughters, candidate for the show Top Chef on M6 in 2018. The death of his son, suffering from cancer, in 2008 will be a painful ordeal. Maïté will close his restaurant in 2015, after a judicial liquidation procedure. Her husband Pierrot leaves in 2020.