Marie-Thérèse Ordonez, better known as Maïté, who hosted successful culinary shows for fifteen years on television, including “La Cuisine des Mousquetaires”, died on Saturday, we learned from the mayor of her native village.
Aged 86, she lived in a nursing home in this town, Rion-des-Landes, said the elected official, confirming information from the media Actu Landes. She returned there to take care of her restaurant after moving away from the small screen at the turn of the 2000s.
The former SNCF employee, with a lilting southwest accent, hosted “La Cuisine des Mousquetaires” from 1983 to 1997 then “À Table” from 1995 to 1999, two very popular shows on France 3.
“Ambassador of our traditional cuisine”
His recipe books decorated with duck fat and his legendary Armagnac “tear” have sold thousands of copies. “It is for Rion, and well beyond, the disappearance of a French woman to whom we were all attached, and even identified, with her good nature, her truculence. People said about her: she's like on TV! And that’s what explains the affection we had for her,” Laurent Civel, mayor of the village since 2014, told AFP.
“Ambassador of our traditional cuisine, popular icon, source of inspiration for so many families, Maïté, who embodied the art of being French so well, is no more,” greeted President Emmanuel Macron on the social network , sending his condolences to his loved ones “and to all those who enjoyed listening to him”.
Aged 86, she lived in a nursing home in this town, Rion-des-Landes, said the elected official, confirming information from the media Actu Landes. She returned there to take care of her restaurant after moving away from the small screen at the turn of the 2000s.
