PARIS — Nearly 5,000 miles stand between New Orleans and Paris as the crow flies, but for at least one night, it felt difficult to sense a physical gap between the two places in a one-block stretch of the Latin Quarter.
A Parisian who walked along the Seine and turned on Rue de Petit Pont in Paris’ 5th Arrondissement would have almost certainly felt transported to a different place. A huge crowd was congregated there, spilling out into the street like it was Mardi Gras. Their chants carried for several blocks, announcing their presence.
Who dat? Who dat? Who dat say they gonna beat dem Saints?
Hundreds of Saints fans from across the world gathered Friday night at the New Orléans Saints Cafe, two days before their team plays the Pittsburgh Steelers in Paris. They came to be together, and to see this slice of home on another continent. They crammed into the dimly lit bar where they saw Saints flags and banners hanging. They overflowed into the street, taking over the bike lanes, which led to police arriving to erect barricades. When they could not cram themselves inside to snag a drink, they took over the neighboring bars, too.
The New Orléans Saints Cafe isn’t some product of coincidence. The bar’s owners, Teto Seghilani and Keli Coleman, split their time between Paris and New Orleans. Teto originally hails from Algeria, and Keli grew up in Kenner. Teto previously owned a restaurant nearby but in 2018 decided “to bring New Orleans here,” Keli said.
Depending on kickoff time, Saints games are aired in the New Orléans Saints Cafe, but they don’t typically draw a large crowd. When Teto and Keli opened the bar, they had no idea that the Saints would eventually follow them to Paris. And the experience this week has been truly unique.
Keli said Saints fans figuratively “busted the door in early” Thursday, with a big group congregated outside the bar before it opened at 5 p.m. Friday, Keli had to squeeze through a mass of people inside the bar in order to find five feet of clear space to conduct an interview.
“It’s great,” Keli said. “I love it.”
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Fleurty Girl owner Lauren LeBlanc Haydel, back right, is mobbed by Saints fans at her popup shop in Paris at New Orleans Cafe in Paris the day before the game against Pittsburgh on Friday, October 23, 2026. (STAFF PHOTO BY CHRIS GRANGER)
Part of the atmosphere was a product of coincidence, however. When Lauren Haydel, who owns the New Orleans boutique Fleurty Girl, was seeking a place to set up a small shop in Paris, she reached out to the owners at New Orléans Saints Cafe to gauge their interest.
“I reached out to (Teto), and he was like, ‘We love Fleurty Girl! My wife shops there,’” Haydel said. “So of course I was like, ‘How do you how do you know about Fleurty Girl?’”
Haydel was shocked to learn that both she and Keli grew up in the same Driftwood Park section of Kenner. They worked together to set up a pop-up shop at the bar, with the idea of selling shirts printed in Paris for a couple hours on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The shirts were made for this game specifically, black shirts featuring the text “Laissez les Who Dats rouler” wrapped around a stylized print of the Eiffel Tower in gold.
She wasn’t sure what to expect at the event. Haydel had to take a leap of faith ordering the shirts from a Parisian company that she had never worked with before — to ship the shirts from the U.S., she would have had to pay import fees and mark up the price on her shirts — and then she arrived early to inspect the product and make sure it met Fleurty Girl’s standards. The gold had to be just right.
She ordered 300 of them, a number that was bigger than what she was personally comfortable with. She packed an extra large suitcase thinking that she would have to return home with unsold merchandise.
When the Haydels arrived at the bar, they saw the crowd and assumed it was one of the guided walking tours of the city. When people started to cheer their arrival, they realized it was something different entirely.
Many in the crowd were there because they’d seen Haydel’s posts on social media previewing the pop-up merchandise stand. Several others had seen posts from fan groups on Facebook, pointing out the bar as a good meeting place for Saints fans. Haydel and her husband, Ryan, crammed themselves into a tiny corner between the bar and the front door, and they barely had time to think as the shirts began to disappear.
“We sold out of our entire weekend supply in three hours,” Haydel said. “At the end of the night people were buying sizes that were way too big just so they could get one.”
Haydel was searching for the proper words to describe the scene. She landed on “happy chaos.”
Even without any more shirts to sell, Haydel planned to return to the bar for the regular pop-up hours Saturday and Sunday. The place felt like home 5,000 miles away from home.