Gozney Dome Gen 2 Review: The Ultimate Backyard Flex

If you were tasked with imagining the archetypal backyard pizza oven, you’d probably picture the Gozney Dome. With its cream or black ceramic exterior and a chimney-topped rotunda silhouette, it immediately conjures golden-hour images of intimate dinner parties and suburban family pizza nights.

It’s the crown jewel of any outdoor kitchen, more lifestyle than appliance. One that founder Tom Gozney himself will happily demonstrate in one of his many YouTube videos where he appears, tattooed and clad in chains and oversized T-shirts, slinging lamb roast and marmite pizzas amid chic patio setups. (“Yo! I’m Tom,” goes a typical intro.)

The Dome Gen 2 is the company’s improvement on 2021’s original Dome, and while it may not sport the finesse and portability of some of its competitors, its design and overall versatility (bolstered by an encyclopedic lineup of interesting accessories) live up to the hype and the price.

Slow Rise

Photograph: Kat Merck

Tom Gozney is a self-admitted former addict with no culinary, business, or design background, who built his first oven to host friends in his garden. This evolved into the UK-based company's first commercially produced oven, the dual-fuel portable Roccbox, in 2016. The restaurant-inspired Dome came five years later, and the Gen 2 version last fall. The marquee feature of the Gen 2 is that it is 40 percent larger than the Gen 1, thanks to the new lateral burner, which no longer occupies space on the 20- by 24-inch deck.