Round-up: Chelsea’s bill headed to governor … PJ’s set to open Essen location … Little Village owners opening upscale bar

Don’t give up on Louisiana just yet: Restaurants such as Chelsea’s Café can continue their business model of offering live entertainment, drink specials and cover charges, thanks to the passing of Senate Bill 136, which allows restaurants to keep their licenses if half the income comes from food sales. The legislation stemmed from disputes between restaurants and state Alcohol and Tobacco Control Commissioner Murphy Painter. Chelsea’s temporarily lost its liquor license at the end of April after Painter claimed the restaurant operated as a bar because it shut down its kitchens after 10 p.m., then had live music with only liquor being served. In with the new: PJ’s Coffee of New Orleans is set to open its fifth Baton Rouge location at the end of July. The company has put up signs at the old Starbucks building on Essen Lane, and officials with the coffee chain confirmed the opening. That’s just around the corner from one of PJ’s newer locations, a shop that opened last summer in the Perkins Palms development. Hauntingly upscale: The owners of the Little Village opened an upscale wine and martini bar underneath the downtown restaurant that for years was the Thirsty Tiger. Willies on the Levee is named after the ghost that reportedly haunts the building. Willie was a stable hand who was killed in 1848, when he was crushed by a falling wall at what is now the site of the bar. “Willie never left,” says Wanda Calkins, general manager. “We decided to name this place after him and give him a permanent home.” Willies replaces The Vault, an upscale wine bar that closed a few months ago.