Shouty, messy, hungry: Matty Matheson is one of the most engaging food personalities online right now.
If there’s good grub involved, the 43-year-old Canadian entrepreneur has a hand in it, from running a two-million-follower Instagram account and fronting his own cookware and condiments brand to running a hospitality company and starring in hit FX series The Bear where he played earnest handyman-turned-waiter Neil Fak.
So what’s a little Gozney collab thrown into the mix?
The pizza oven brand has teamed up with Matheson on its latest signature edition design, an orange version of the portable Gozney Tread, finished with illustrations inspired by Matheson’s world, including his art gallery of tatts.
The chef and personality is a die-hard Gozney fan: just a glance at his cooking content reveals the proof. Whether he’s kneading pizza dough, prepping a focaccia or grilling meat, there’s usually a Gozney fired up in the background.
With the signature edition Tread set for release on June 18, I took the natty Matty oven for a spin to see if it’s worth the hype.
Gozney x Matty Matheson Tread Key Specs
Packaging
Clear the room; this grill needs plenty of floor space if you’re having it delivered to your door. For gardens with gate access, you may be better off having it dropped off there.
The pizza oven, along with the tripod-style legs, paddles, serving boards and the oven’s roof rack, comes in an entourage of cardboard boxes, which I noticed are free from glue and sticky tape, making them much easier to chuck into the recycling with minimal faff.
Fuel workaround
A standard gas tank is both fiddly and expensive, as you have to pay for the cost of the canister if you don’t already have one ready to fill up. When I rang around, the cost of this was around the £80 mark. Instead, a friend suggested I get a gas canister hose kit to adapt the Gozney to a smaller fuel canister, the sort you’d take camping. These cost a much more palatable £10 for around four hours of fuel.
Once Amazon delivered the fuel and hose kit, it took less than half an hour to get the Gozney set up and pre-heated to the correct temperature to cook fresh pizza pies, which I sourced unbaked from my local pizza parlour in the interests of time.
Set up
The extendable legs go down first - each leg can be adjusted and tweaked in case you’re working with uneven terrain. Then you’ll need to mount the Tread itself - a two-person job - which has to be secured to a bracket before it can sit on top of the legs. You should find the bracket fitting in the tripod stand box, along with an Allen key and three screws.
Next, hoist the roof rack on top of the oven. Now, this isn’t necessary, but it creates a hot plate-like surface which can heat side dishes using heat emitted from the top of the oven, which may be useful if you’re cooking for a crowd. There’s a heat-resistant cover too, so you can use it as a normal prep surface if you don’t require scorching temperatures.
Performance
Once everything was hooked up, clicked on and ignited, it took around half an hour of pre-heating to get the oven up to pizza-slinging levels, keeping a hungry eye on the temperature gauge throughout. This initial preheat step also primes the oven interior, purifying it with flames.
When it was finally time to paddle the pie into the Tread’s mouth, the crust and mozzarella began bubbling before my eyes. Unprepared for such speedy baking, I reached for the smaller peel tool to manoeuvre the pie around so that it would cook evenly, but my rookie technique meant the pepperoni was left slightly more charred than one might feel comfortable serving to strangers.
In all, the fresh pizza took a few minutes to cook, requiring a watchful eye the entire time. This isn’t the kind of cooking that allows you to crack open a beer and wander off for a chat, but it is a slick piece of kit that your friends and family will line up to coo over.
Price - is it worth it?
Gozney is a market-leading pizza oven brand, with prices sitting firmly on the premium end of the scale. Our testing received plenty of admiring glances in my building’s communal gardens - the garden manager even came over for a closer look, mistaking the Tread for fancy photo equipment (thank the tripod legs for that).
It looks amazing and cooks pizza in an authentic way, revealed in the first bite. And if you can’t live on pizza alone, you can also use this baby to cook chicken, steak, ribs, cookies, naan bread - heck, even a tomahawk if you’re feeling Matheson-level fancy.
But portable? Not what I’d call it. It’s more compact out of its cardboard packaging, but the heavy oven must be carried in both hands, which you can do alone if you have a reasonable level of bicep strength. Unless you have a car with a roomy boot, it isn’t particularly portable - and that’s before you even heap on the accessories like the paddles, peels and the roof rack.
For those willing to invest in a playful new cooking toy, the colourway of this signature edition Tread will turn heads and make your garden an infinitely happier place to be.
Verdict
Gozney x Matty Matheson Tread pizza oven
Gozney’s latest limited edition pizza oven comes as a collab between the brand and Canadian chef-entrepreneur Matty Matheson, who fans of The Bear will recognise from the show.
Designed to cook pizza to perfection, the orange design features illustrations inspired by Matheson’s body art, giving it a cool edge you won’t be able to wait to show off to the neighbours.
After a round of pre-heating, it takes mere minutes to get pies cooking right before your eyes, so keep the pizza peel handy.
While the oven is billed as portable, it’s still pretty heavy to carry, even in its custom bag, which is sold separately. It’s best for those with wheels or access to a garden rather than flat-dwelling pizzaiolos hoping to snag a sunny patch in the local park.
Buy now, Gozney
