Obamas Bid Bon Appetit to Hollande (and Bradley Cooper)

Guess who came to dinner at the White House state affair for French President Franois Hollande?Well, besides Bradley Cooper.Not Hollande's wife, because he doesn't have one.

Not his gorgeous girlfriends, because he's already dumped two of them. And not his current gorgeous girlfriend, because, well, she's just too new to display to the Yanks, already agog at the details of his complicated romantic life.But the show must go on when it's a grand state dinner at stake, and so President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama welcomed a solo Hollande for tonight's gala at the White House, where the celebrity guests included French-speaking heartthrob movie star Bradley Cooper and his girlfriend Suki Waterhouse.

Mrs. Obama, alone in the fashion spotlight tonight, wore a two-toned satiny gown, with a black-lace bodice and a full skirt in "liberty" blue with a wing-like train, by Carolina Herrera, according to her press people.Other boldfaced names among the 350 guests included filmmaker J.

J. Abrams accompanied by Irish actress Katie McGrath; Jill Abramson, editor of The New York Times, comedian Stephen Colbert, actress/comedian Mindy Kaling, Veep star Julia Louis-Dreyfus, MSNBC pundit the Rev. Al Sharpton; Oscar-nominated actress Cicely Tyson; and CNN chief Jeff Zucker.

Singer Mary J. Blige also was there and will be performing.The big question going into the dinner was who would sit next to President Obama in the seat usually reserved for the female companion of the male guest of honor.

A listing of the guests at the head table seemed to suggest it would be Thelma Golden, head of the Studio Museum of Harlem in New York, while funnyman Colbert was seated next to FLOTUS.They all dined inside a huge, heated tent on the South Lawn (because no room inside the White House is large enough to seat that many) at the Obamas' seventh state dinner in five years, making it a relatively rare occasion compared to some of his predecessors (President Reagan presided over 50).The menu was American (no point in trying to outdo the French at their own game), including American Osetra caviar and quail eggs, winter garden salad with red wine vinaigrette, and dry-aged rib-eye beef and oysters and braised chard, finishing with Hawaiian chocolate-malted ganache over vanilla ice cream and tangerines.

Even the wine, especially the wine, was American: Morlet La Proportion Doree, 2011, Napa Valley; Chester-Kidder Red Blend 2009, Columbia Valley, Wash.; and Thibaut-Jannison Blanc de Chardonnay, Monticello.When planning for the French state dinner began last year, Hollande was still living with his girlfriend, French journalist Valerie Trierweiler, for whom he had left his previous longtime romantic partner, French politician Sgolne Royal, the mother of his four children.

But after the official White House invitations including Trierweiler went out, a French tabloid snapped a helmeted Hollande arriving via motorcycle to a liaison with his new girlfriend, French actress Julie Gayet. Sacre bleu!Suddenly, Trierweiler was out, and had to be hospitalized.

But Gayet was not yet in, and new White House invitations were hastily prepared. Of course, neither Obama referred to any of this during the official welcoming ceremonies and public events today, during which Mrs. Obama wore a scarlet flared coat with black gloves and knee-high black suede boots.

Hollande's three-day visit included a trip with POTUS to President Jefferson's Monticello estate in Charlottesville, Virginia on Monday. The Obamas also presented Hollande with a gift, described by the White House as a custom-designed table that includes some wood from a fallen oak tree at Mount Vernon, the home of President George Washington. The center of the table is a handcrafted replica of the key to the Bastille that the Marquis de Lafayette gave to President Washington in 1790, forged from reclaimed iron from the Statue of Liberty.

Despite the Hollande contretemps, it's not unprecedented for a world leader to be feted solo at the White House: China's Hu Jintao didn't bring his wife to a state dinner in 2011, and Hollande's predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, soloed at a dinner in November 2007, a month after divorcing his wife, Cecilia (but before he married actress/model/singer Carla Bruni).What is unprecedented is the White House use of social media in advance of the dinner. It's traditional for a first lady to preview the dinner place settings, the flowers and the menu, as Mrs.

Obama did on Monday. It's more unusual for the White House to offer "behind-the-scenes" video of preparations, and for FLOTUS to tweet photos of pickled vegetables from her kitchen garden to be used in the dinner. Also, she tweeted an adorable shot of her dogs, Sunny and Bo, perched on upholstered chairs around a table set for the dinner.

"Bone apptit!" the caption read. Tres prcieux!