The President of the Republic reacted on X to the disappearance of the Landes cook, saluting the “ambassador of our traditional cuisine, popular icon, source of inspiration for so many families […]. I send my condolences to his family, his loved ones and all those who enjoyed listening to him. »
Generous cuisine
Former employee of the SNCF (for twenty-two years she announced trains arriving on the track with a trumpet), she was spotted during a report on the rugby players of Rion, for whom she cooked. She opened her first restaurant in 1988, which housed the film set to record the shows. His success became global with “À Table”, broadcast on TV5 Europe then Monde from 1997.
In the company of Micheline Banzet-Lawton, her sidekick, she popularized local cuisine, and Gascon in particular, thanks to her outspokenness, her thunderous voice and her sense of proportion (the recipe for the King size burger with duck breast attests to this). A generous cuisine, it goes without saying, based on duck, foie gras, sauces, all washed down with “armagnac lichettes”.
She closed her first establishment (where, in the early 1990s, you had to reserve three months in advance), to finally reopen another, in 2000, still in Rion, still called Chez Maïté. An attraction in the village, even being included in the visit offered to tourists in summer. In 2006, she offered a course in cutting fat duck, like on TV, but in the flesh.
In April 2007, she declared in our columns: “When people come to taste my dishes, it’s to eat good products. And the atmosphere goes with it. I like meeting customers. I go to all the tables and we laugh, it's friendly. It’s sure, we’re not intellectuals, but we have a good time…”
The establishment was liquidated in April 2015. She had left the kitchen since the end of the 2000s for health reasons and has since become rare in the village. She had retired to the Rion-des-Landes nursing home.
