The team

Two of us at the oven, four on a Friday.

Gethin built the oven in the back of 31 Taff Street brick by brick in 2019 after a winter in Naples; Carys joined a year later from her family's café in Treforest and runs the dough school, the van and the front. On a Friday night there are four of us between the oven, the counter and the boxes.

A man in his early forties with a short dark beard and a charcoal apron beside a brick pizza oven

A man in his early forties with a short dark beard, rolled sleeves and a charcoal apron, standing beside a domed wood-fired pizza oven with a wooden peel

Gethin Bowen

Owner and at the oven

Gethin cooked in restaurants in Cardiff and Bristol for fifteen years and spent a winter in Naples working the oven at a pizzeria near the station. He came home to Pontypridd in 2019, built the oven in the back of 31 Taff Street brick by brick with a mason from Ynysybwl, and has fired it four nights a week since. He chooses the oak, mixes the dough on a Monday, and runs the oven on a Friday night.

A woman in her mid thirties with dark curly hair tied back, a black apron over a striped shirt, smiling at a floured counter with dough balls in trays

Carys Ricci

Dough school, the van and the front

Carys grew up above her grandfather's café in Treforest, one of the valley Italian families, and knows more about dough than anyone she has met. She joined in 2020, made the cashew mozzarella work, started the Sunday dough school, and runs the van, the slots, the allergen sheets and the front of the shop. If you ring about the gluten-free base, it is Carys who rings back.

48hthe dough proves before it meets the oven
450°on the oven floor, fired with Welsh oak from a woodland in Llanwonno
90sfrom the peel going in to the pizza coming out
4.9average rating

The rest of us, and the paperwork

Friday night, the oak, and four things worth knowing.

Friday night

Gethin on the oven, a second pizzaiolo on the counter stretching and topping, Carys on the slots and the till, and a student folding boxes. About two hundred and forty pizzas between five and ten.

The oak

Seasoned two years, from a managed woodland at Llanwonno six miles up the valley, delivered by the tonne in October. About a tonne lasts five weeks. Nothing comes from a garden centre bag.

The paperwork

Food hygiene rated five since we opened; allergen sheets reviewed every time a recipe or a supplier changes; the van and the shop both covered for public liability; the oven chimney swept every quarter.

Where the money goes

On a £9 margherita the flour, tomato and cheese are about £2.10, the oak 30p, the box 40p, and the rest is wages, rent on Taff Street, and the VAT. We put the good mozzarella in the price and say so.

A charcoal-painted pizza shop front on a Welsh town high street at dusk, a warm orange glow from the oven through the window, a bench outside

Number thirty-one

A cobbler, a bookie, then an oven.

Number thirty-one was a cobbler for fifty years and a bookmaker for twenty, then empty, when Gethin took the lease in 2019. The oven took three months to build, with a mason from Ynysybwl and four tonnes of firebrick, and had to be lifted through the back on a hoist from the river side. The charcoal front is the colour of the oven door. The glow in the window is real.

Finding the shop

Pick a slot. It comes out as you walk in.

Choose a collection time from the slots still open, every ten minutes while the oven is lit, say what you would like, and it goes into the oven three minutes before your time.

Book a collection slot The menu