Credits: Thierry Caro / Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 3.0.
Babette de Rozières, the 77-year-old Creole chef who seemed omnipresent on the now-defunct France Ô channel, made a desperate attempt at yet another comeback in politics under the LR-RN banner. This major comeback, backed in person by Éric Ciotti after the National Assembly was dissolved, ended yesterday in a miserable, crushing defeat. Babette, once a starlet on cooking shows and no longer exactly young, has now swapped her pots and pans for political speeches, with the support of the RN, whose young president Bardella she admires greatly.
But here’s the thing: Elisabeth Hildebert, née Babette, joined Radio Courtoisie in the fall of 2023, the station where she proudly talks about papaya and other exotic treats. A well-spiced speech that does not lack bite, coming from someone who claims she was beaten up in an elevator at the ORTF because she was Black!
Facing outgoing Macronist MP Nadia Hai and Aurélien Rousseau of the New Popular Front, Babette, who believed France was in danger and saw herself saving it according to our colleagues at Le Parisien, bit the dust. She, who rarely missed a dish, got a serving from voters.
It must be said that this was not Babette’s first electoral drubbing. As far back as 2017, as an LR candidate, she had crashed and burned with a meager 6.53% of the vote. Even her former friendships with Jacques Chirac, her enthusiastic applause for Nicolas Sarkozy, and her seat as a regional councilor alongside Valérie Pécresse in 2015 could not save her.
Babette, whose married name is Butin, even drew the ire of her former friend Valérie Pécresse with her 2023 book The Hidden Face of Politics in Île-de-France, picking up a few defamation complaints along the way. And as if that weren’t enough, she was sentenced in 2018 to one year of ineligibility for rejected campaign accounts and repeated the offense in 2024 with defamatory remarks.
The glamorous cook also managed to make enemies in the entertainment world. After reportedly considering a music career, she alienated Clotilde Courreau, Genenviève de Fontenay, and Mimie Mathy, whom she accused of racism, threatening to bring the famous actress down to bonsai level.
In 2015, the self-absorbed cook founded the Overseas Gastronomy Fair, a promising initiative bringing together exhibitors from the Caribbean, Réunion, French Guiana, and Polynesia. But even with the supposed support of Brigitte Macron and Anne Hidalgo, her political credibility quickly went up in smoke.
Between image rights, public subsidies, and a tangled web of companies, Babette’s affairs are a real mess. Despite all her efforts to shine, her political career now seems thoroughly cooked. The candidate in the RN’s shadow failed to convince, and her defeat is a resounding slap in the face.
Let’s wish this near-octogenarian a peaceful retirement, despite some admitted tensions with her only daughter…
The one who also tried her hand at history studies in her youth said of Mimie Mathy: "People imagine she’s nice, but she’s a fake nice person. Besides, everyone around her knows perfectly well that I’m telling the truth."
And you, Babette, what do you think they say about you?