The icon of French gastronomy and star of the small screen in the 80s and 90s, Maïté, died surrounded by her family this Saturday, December 21, 2024, at the age of 86, in the retirement home in her village from Rion-des-Landes, following a neurodegenerative disease. One more tragedy which strikes the Ordonez family, 11 years after the death of their son Serge.
Years before Philippe Etchebest, Cyril Lignac or Thierry Marx, she was a Landes woman with a lilting accent who made the French salivate, sitting in the warmth of their living room, with her gourmet recipes showcasing southern gastronomy. -west. From its XXL burger to the famous eel sequence, Maïté, real name Marie-Thérèse Ordonezaccompanied by her faithful sidekick Micheline Banzet-Lawton (who died in 2020), brought cooking into the PAF of the 80s and 90s, with her cult shows The Musketeers' kitchen et A table !broadcast on France 3. The disappearance of this vintage but no less emblematic figure of French television was announced by News Landesthis Saturday, December 21, 2024. According to this regional newspaper, the former cook and TV presenter died at the age of 86 in the retirement home of her native village, Rion-des-Landes, as a result of a neurodegenerative disease the nature of which has not been specified.
From the 2000s, the star of the kitchen became more and more discreet on television, after opening his restaurant At Maïté in his Landes village in 1998. A voluntary and assumed distance from camerasthat his granddaughter Camille, participant in the show Top Chef objective, defended in 2015: “She is doing well, she is enjoying her retirement and her family. She no longer wants to answer interviews or do television, it's no longer her thing. It's a desire on her part to fade away like her the fact, she no longer has the same interests. She prefers to stay with her family. But, in 2015, his establishment was forced to close its doors once and for all after accumulating too much debt. It had been two years since the chef had worked there, too consumed by grief since the death of her son.
Death of Maïté: the wound of the loss of her son
If the emblematic cook of the southwest left surrounded by her family, important members of her family were unfortunately not present. Starting with Serge Ordonez, the only son of Jean-Pierre Coffe's former competitor. Indeed, Camille and Perrine's father died of cancer in 2013 at the age of 52. The devastating loss of her child had plunged the cook into deep depression, which would have caused her to lose “the taste of life” according to information fromHere Parisas well as 30 kilos of pain. Seven years later, in 2020, grief struck Maïté once again, when her husband, Jean-Pierre Ordonez, nicknamed “Pierrot”, died at the age of 84. The two spouses, both former SCNF workers, had been inseparable since childhood. The widow was able to count on the support of her grandchildren to recover from these two losses.
