She brought cooking to the screens, gastronomy to television. With her accent, her authenticity, her knowledge of our terroirs, Maïté had become a character in our popular culture, loved by all, the incarnation of our French know-how. Her death is that of a woman who, through cooking, also transmitted values of sharing, of rootedness, of fraternity.
Born on June 2, 1938 in Rion-des-Landes, Marie-Thérèse Ordonez began a life placed on the rails of the SNCF, for which her parents and her husband worked. She was hired there as an announcer, a metaphor for her career to follow: walking the paths of the land, using her thunderous voice to capture the attention of an audience. Retired from the SNCF, the one everyone called “Maïté” became a cook, initially on a voluntary basis, depending on events in local and associative life. In 1983, Maïté was spotted during a report on the rugby players of the Rion club, the Jeunesse sportif rionnaise, where her son played, by the director Patrice Pellot, like her from the southwest.
At the start of the 1983 school year, “La cuisine des mousquetaires” began: in duo with producer Micheline Banzet, Maïté entertained every day in her kitchen, and soon, from 1988, in the studios of France 3 Aquitaine or those of her own restaurant in Rion. Farces, capons, Armagnac and flambéed chickens, eels and foie gras, Maïté's cuisine enchanted millions of viewers for twelve years, amazed by the energy, the frankness, the humor of a woman who never let it go. never count. At a time when a “new cuisine” professing purity reigned, his cuisine went against the grain. At a time when French gastronomy was modernizing, cuisine was industrializing, and the economy was globalizing, its defense of the terroirs was also part of a joyful and friendly resistance. Taking up the torch of television cooking, following in the footsteps of Raymond Oliver, but the first woman thus brought to light, she was at the head of a weekly program until 1999. Having become a popular figure with an inimitable voice, Maïté was also an actress and author of books for the general public. A star in Paris, she ran two restaurants until 2015 in Rion, called, in her own way, devoid of affectations, “chez Maïté”. Until the end, this cook was for her family and for all French people a tireless transmitter of passions.
The President of the Republic and his wife salute the memory of a woman who was a pioneer in television, and who by inviting herself to the lunch of families in France, won a place in our hearts. They send their heartfelt condolences to his family, his loved ones and those who loved him.
