Hes been a screenwriter in Hollywood, a U.S. Navy seaman and an Astoria City Councilor, but through it all remains one truth about Peter Roscoe: He loves Italian food.

Celebrating Fulios Pastarias 10th anniversary this month, Roscoe has established it and the accompanying delicatessen as the epicenter for Italian cuisine in Astoria, while recently adding a chef from Germany and soon bringing in a candy shop next door.

In my journey, Ive cooked a lot of different kinds of American foods, some nouvelle cuisine and quasi-French stuff said Roscoe, sitting in his restaurant May 13 preparing, as an Astoria Regatta volunteer, to host the Portland Rose Festival Court. I think the spontaneity of Italian food is what appeals to me. Theres a tradition in Italian food, but also written into the … rules of Italian cuisine is spontaneity.

My mother was an extraordinary cook. We grew up in a very wealthy setting, so she was educated in Europe and I was exposed from day one to cuisine. I grew up with cuisine in an era where people ate instant mashed potatoes. Ive never had em.

After planning in the early 2000s to enter the location where T. Pauls Supper Club is, Roscoe saw a golden opportunity at 1149 Commercial St. It had been renovated to house Jessadas Thai restaurant, owned by Ray Billings, who was trying to lure two Thai chefs away from the Typhoon restaurant in Portland. As it turned out, the chefs had a noncompetition clause with Typhoon, were deported after being denied green cards and never made it to Astoria. Billings restaurant foundered; he disappeared without notice, and the doors opened up to Roscoe.

I just came in and opened the doors, basically, said Roscoe, who started Fulios in May of 2003 in the Pythian Building after some minor aesthetic changes.

Just last year he bought the building, including 1147, 1149, and 1153 Commercial St. It was the first downtown building, he added, reconstructed after the fire and opened in 1924 as the Recreation Tavern. He still pulls relics out of the basement.

Even in 1971, shortly before his journey to Hollywood to become a screenwriter, Roscoe said he sat with a high school sweetheart on the Fiddlers Green in Eugene. He told her of his suspicion he would return to Astoria one day to open a restaurant.

He served in the U.S. Navy and later made it to Hollywood and worked from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, getting writing and other credits on such movies as St. Helens, a dramatization of the mountains eruption, OHaras Wife in 1982 and TV shows such as The Street, a cinema verite police drama based in Newark, N.J.

Roscoe, whos owned restaurants for 20 years, opened Portland restaurant Cozze (mussels in English) in 1995 and operated it for six and a half years. By 1999 he returned to Astoria.

Roscoe said he opened the Sand Trap at the Gearhart Golf Links, where McMenamins is, in 2001. Despite pouring money into the venture, he was only able to hold on for about a year.

Then in 2003 came Fulios. Roscoe said hes had a solid business plan over the years, responding to needs such as reformatting the restaurants front for window seating and expanding the menu to make Fulios a Tuscan steakhouse as well.

That whole second page jumped my business up tremendously, he said.

In 2008, he added the delicatessen and a bar area. He had more luck than Billings pulling chefs from Portland to Astoria, bringing in German sous chef and kitchen manager Harald Grützmacher, who previously worked at the Portland City Grill, in February.

Candyman coming

to Astoria

For some time, Roscoes been trying to rent the location on the eastern flank of his restaurant. About a month ago, the parents of Matt Matzen, whos been making candy for some time on the Long Beach (Wash.) Peninsula, decided to back his new venture, and he approached Roscoe about the space.

Hoping to open by this weekend or soon thereafter, Matts Candies will offer a full array of sweets and an exhibition window to an interior kitchen, where guests can watch Matzen at work.

In-house, were going to make fresh fudge, said Matzen, who most recently worked at the Candy Man, a Sweet Shoppe in Long Beach, Wash. I do handmade chocolates.

My folks will help me theyre the ones backing me. But otherwise Ill be the one whos here pretty much 24 hours a day.

In addition to making his own candies, Matzen will bring in products from Pennsylvania Dutch Candies, Guittard Chocolates of California and Candy Basket-Shor Hill Taffy in Portland.