Living Más: How friends built one of the Valley’s tastiest pop-ups

In the last golden hour of a late summer day, dinner service is revving up at a hot new pizzeria. Eager diners — young, hip couples snapping pics, chatty groups, parents with antsy kids — queue in anticipation. 

Once they order their pie, salad or baked shells, they pull up at colorful stools around tables draped with cloth and paper runners. Bubbly jazz drifts from a vintage hi-fi while customers talk or doodle with the Crayons placed next to vases of fresh flowers. 

Each seat offers a front-row view of the open kitchen, where a cluster of four chefs in matching white, short-sleeved, collared shirts stretch dough by hand and slide pies into the glowing wood-fired oven.

This pizzeria, Irma, has a rustic, laid-back charm that speaks to the skill and taste of its chef, Matt Celaya, and his three-man collective, Más Amable. 

Yet, Irma won’t last. Or rather, it can’t. The restaurant’s dining room sits along the stamped concrete promenade of a quiet, desert-toned shopping center in Gilbert. The improvised kitchen stands on the sweltering blacktop of a couple of angled parking spaces on a triple-digit day.

Hours before they started firing pies, Celaya and his crew arrived to transform the patio outside the pop-up’s host, Mythical Coffee Roasters. They unloaded stainless tables to form the skeleton of the outdoor kitchen, undocked the pizza oven from the truck and fired it up. They built their mise en place around coolers filled with toppings and balls of dough.

Celaya buzzes from one task to the next, flipping through a collection of records he stashed under the turntable before returning to the kitchen for a final rundown of the menu with the night’s front of house crew, Cole Mills and Shai Gary. He bops back to stretch a disc of dough, moving it in time to the swing of the music. Then he scatters toppings onto a test pizza.

Celaya, 32, has the tousled locks and angular features of a young Mark Ruffalo. He uses descriptors like “magnanimous,” “sweet” and “beautiful” with the chill earnestness of your favorite high school music teacher. 

Chefs Michael Petry and Justin Dean, the other two compatriots of Más Amable, divide and conquer.

Petry flits in and out of Mythical’s small indoor kitchen to set up a station to finish pasta and store the night’s dessert: small paper cartons of Cream of the Crop’s Riso ice cream, a rice pudding-inspired treat spiked with cinnamon. The tall, shaggy, bearded 31-year-old, whom the crew all call “Mikey,” will spend the rest of the evening putting the final touches on pies and dishes before they go out to diners.

Dean, 29, tends the wood fire inside the nearly 1,000-degree oven. Celaya calls his friend “the greatest pizza chef on the planet.” Sporting a “Top Gun”-era mustache and a black ball cap, Dean slides the tester into the oven. A few minutes later, he coaxes the pie out on a peel. The raw, pale pie has transformed with a golden crust, the bright yellow of roasted corn and the fatty sizzle of soppressata.

“Whoa, that looks gangster,” Celaya says at the sight. “Damn, Justin.”

Petry finishes the pie with drizzles of garlic oil and peach mostarda while Celaya looks on. Petry debates aloud, “Chiltepin, would that be crazy?” This final hour before service is their last moment for R&D. The chef’s mind rarely stops turning. He slices the pie and hands out pieces. Petry and Bryan Suarez, who has joined the crew to man a second portable pizza oven for the night, clink the slices like Champagne flutes. They both take a bite and nod, agreeing they like it as-is.

In a matter of hours, the group conjured a restaurant from what they could pack into a few cars. Celaya and his team are masters of setting up and breaking down with the precision of a traveling circus.

“We wanted it to have a magical quality to it, and I think a lot of the guests would remember those things,” Celaya says of these efforts. “Maybe not what they ate per se, but they remember the evening.” 

They have worked in some of the Valley’s most notable kitchens. That experience — paired with their own dogged support of the local scene, a scrappy DIY ethos and an unrelenting appreciation for even the smallest touches — has inspired their pop-up. These mobile concepts are the proverbial proving grounds for future restaurants, a format the pandemic only accelerated around the Valley.

There’s no sure thing in the restaurant industry. Higher costs have only magnified that reality. It begs the question, will a crew like this, that’s carved out a notable niche in Phoenix’s dining scene as a side hustle, take the next step into their own space? Much like a local band, they’ve ascended to bigger and bigger stages over the last three years. Still, these friends are more concerned with making each ephemeral meal count.

“There’s obviously a tremendous amount of passion and heart thrown into this project,” Celaya says. “It’s like, who knows? Chances are we won’t make it. But we got to do it anyway.”

Who is Más Amable?

While many pop-ups start as one-chef hustles, Más Amable operated as a collective from the jump. Celaya, Petry and Dean met more than a decade ago, slinging pizzas at Fire & Brimstone inside Barnone at The Farm at Agritopia in Gilbert.

The trio, all raised in the East Valley, initially bonded over music. They each have taken up an instrument or dabbled in production, and Petry has played guitar in local acts. Fire & Brimstone’s closet-sized kitchen became their personal DJ booth. They’d share artists with each other and keep the energy high. When the tickets felt endless, Gorillaz or Drake or some EDM helped them persevere.

“When you’re cooking and music’s involved, it just makes you work better,” Celaya says. “Nothing really gets me super excited the way music does.”

Post-shift coffees or beers, and inviting each other to shows, deepened their connections.

Celaya has ambition and experience as a co-owner of the Gilbert ice cream shop Cream of the Crop. He has also cooked in such top Valley kitchens as Pa’La and Tratto. He daydreamed about hosting a dinner for friends and family, cooking with the same people who never made working the line feel like work. Eventually, his wife told him he needed to quit talking and start doing something about it.

Más Amable hosted its first dinner at the Gilbert pizzeria in 2022. It got hectic. Petry, who has worked at Belly and on the grill at the popular Mesa Mexican restaurant Espiritu, stopped in that night just to check out the event and instead ended up hopping into the kitchen to help. His efforts that night showed Celaya a different side of his friend. He’d considered Petry a loveable but unserious cook who was often late and goofed off on the pizzeria line. That night, he saw someone locking into their craft.

“He really held down that service,” Celaya says. “If he wasn’t there, it would have been a complete disaster.”

The trio didn’t host another Más Amble dinner for six months. When they did, they saw 200 to 300 diners, Dean estimates. It was a trying service with hours-long waits for food. 

“We were in way over our heads,” Dean says. “Tickets just didn’t stop printing. There were tickets that were a mile long. It was a miracle that we made it through that night.”

Amid the sweat-inducing pressure, the men fell into a dance they’d developed during eight years dodging one another in Fire & Brimstone’s small kitchen when they had to get plates out. The diners were still largely friends and family. That offered a shade of grace — people chatted over wine while they waited — but it wasn’t how the men wanted the night to go. 

Once dinner ended, they caught their breath. They resolved to change. Going forward, they’d sell a limited number of tickets for dinner-party-style events. That proved another lesson. The $50 dinner featured “excessive” amounts of chicken, lamb and pork belly, Celaya says, and they didn’t charge enough to cover those food costs.

“We would spend everything we had,” Petry says. “We never saved for those.” 

Ambitions for a restaurant faded into the background as they scraped to finish one pop-up with enough money to put into the next one. They also wondered whether their vision was too weird for the East Valley. In those first few dinners, the chefs saw an appetite. But to grow, they’d have to act more like a restaurant.

“Those early private dinners all felt like the last one,” Celaya says. “You just don’t know if it’s gonna matter or build traction or be financially a possibility.”

Gradually, across years of schlepping equipment and feeding hundreds of people, they learned what dishes worked and developed more discipline. Though their menus and the format have evolved over time, the group has consistently served rustic plates of market-fresh seasonal veg, pastas, flame-kissed bistro chickens, porchetta and ribs.

They also held down day jobs and family responsibilities. Celaya and Petry work full-time jobs in hospitality, and Dean’s days focus on finance. As the pop-up grew, Celaya’s family also expanded, with the arrival of his third child.

Petry likens the balancing act of Más Amable to playing in a band. Stay with him, here. Dean is the drummer, the “rock” who keeps time. Mills, who gets food out to guests, is the bassist — an overlooked but vital role, Petry says. Celaya is the frontman. Petry says he’s lead guitarist, ever ready to work in some “flair.” Together, they transcend their individual talents.

“We wouldn’t be Más,” Petry says, “without one another.”

Many cooks in the kitchen

The men know they tend to over-romanticize what a meal can be. They see every event as an opportunity to create a core memory for someone. That holds true whether they’re serving $28 platters of grilled lamb or $16 pizzas.

“Hopefully, you think about that for the rest of your life, and you can forget about how hot it was that day,” Petry says.  

Celaya first felt the dreamy pull to restaurants well before he worked in them. While visiting San Francisco as a teen, he was intrigued by relaxed people dining al fresco at bistro tables.

“That interested me, the place that a restaurant has in your life and why you go to them,” Celaya says. “It’s exciting. I didn’t eat out that much growing up, but when we did, it was like heck yeah, Chili’s or Applebee’s.”

His charmed philosophy shows up in the pop-up’s name. Más Amable means “more friendly, more lovely, kinder,” per the group’s website. It’s also the mantra for every dinner the group hosts. The trio of cooks unabashedly agrees the pop-up is a celebration of their friendship.

While Más Amable continued cooking around the East Valley, the pop-up found its footing in downtown Phoenix, including a residency at Sauvage Wine Bar and Shop. There were still things they had to figure out — and that they inevitably forgot to pack into the car. (For a group that cooks outdoors at night, they still never manage to remember to bring a light.)

Once service gets underway, the chefs are all business. Chalk it up to the stress of orders coming in or simply locking in. The food becomes the focus, and the chitchat melts away.

“You just know how to read each other and what’s needed without needing to say it,” Celaya says.

The group used the weekly dinner as an opportunity to flex their creativity and tap their industry friend group. Chefs, including the Global Ambassador’s Reece Stokes, Valentine’s Nico Zades and Devan Cunningham, a private chef and co-founder of CC’s on Central, have all collaborated with them on one-night-only dinners.

Más Amable debuted Irma in 2025 as a callback to their personal history and an excuse to host family-friendly events for their original supporters in the East Valley. 

Eric Hervey, a co-owner of Mythical Coffee, was eager to help host. He admires their obsession with the experience.

“Something Matt is capturing is this unhurried community,” he says. “Like come for the food, stay for the hang.”

Hervey points out that the group showed up five hours before they boxed up their first Irma pizza — something customers don’t notice when things run seamlessly.

“What he does with this pop-up makes it feel effortless,” Hervey says. “It’s not just casual. But they make it look casual, which is such an art in service.”

Más Amable ended its year on a high, cooking at the second anniversary party for Huarachis Taqueria, the second restaurant from James Beard Award-winning chef Rene Andrade.

But the hustle started to take a toll.

Más meets Matilda

While the passion remains, the constant shuffle and push for a new menu each week wore the guys down, Celaya says. The driving, loading, unloading and late-night cleaning in their commissary kitchen became a Sisyphean task. Though Celaya, Petry and Dean believe in the potential for a Más Amable restaurant, they considered the grind of getting funding, of finding investors and the right space. Celaya didn’t want to gamble or dive headlong into something that would consume the precious time he has with his wife and kids.

“Unless you have deep pockets or right-place, right time,” he wonders, “what are your options?”

Then a spunky little orange-and-navy coffee truck needed a party.

While Devon McConville worked on her next project, a downtown Phoenix cafe, she also wanted to celebrate the seventh year of her mobile coffee cruiser, First Place Coffee.

She and the First Place team hosted a weekend-long fete in March 2025. They invited local pop-ups and food trucks to serve alongside the coffee truck. They set up outside the former Garden Bar on Sixth Avenue and Roosevelt Street, a bungalow that would soon transform into Matilda’s.

Más Amable’s crew was among the cooks. McConville noticed how they worked.

“They were having fun together,” she says. “I could just see that they just really enjoyed what they were doing and enjoyed doing it together.”

That weekend started a conversation between McConville and Celaya about moving into the kitchen at Matilda’s. They saw eye-to-eye on food and hospitality as well as managing teams and balancing work against having a life.

“He’s the leader,” McConville says of Celaya. “But he also lets his team flourish and shares the spotlight with them just as much.”

Celaya brought Petry as his right hand. Since the cafe opened in February, the pair has guided a small kitchen crew who cook breakfast, lunch, snacks and, as of April, dinner.

The downtown nook has become a hot spot. Devoted First Place Coffee customers, a homey space and thoughtfully made food created a perfect storm at Matilda’s. On weekends, lines stretch out the glass door of the little white house, down the walk that cuts through the front yard, and sometimes onto the sidewalk past the picket fence.

It’s the kind of crush that Celaya and Petry know from their years running the popular pop-up. Most of the dishes at Matilda’s are built for quick prep in a small kitchen. Hit with an endless ticking of tickets, they didn’t panic. Instead, they staffed up and encouraged everyone to relax.

“I tell the cooks, just cook like jazz,” Celaya says. “Things are going to happen every single day. If you can’t learn to anticipate that and go with it, you’re going to be a stressed-out human being.”

The recently-released dinner menu includes ribs with a sweet-and-sour, agrodolce-style sauce, fresh malfadine pasta with Bianco DiNapoli Tomato pomodoro and hearty roasted chicken with Medjool dates and capers. Diners can finish the meal with a quirky bruleed brioche sundae topped with Cream of the Crop’s titular scoop made with vanilla bean, cream cheese and a hint of lime.

At Matilda’s, Celaya and Petry infuse their creativity into a permanent home, without worrying about packing up at the end of the night. The daily grind of cooking on the line has surprised Celaya.

“I don’t think I anticipated enjoying it as much as I have, which also excites me,” he says. “It kind of has re-sparked that excitement of being in restaurants and operating them.”

More Más

Though Petry and Celaya’s focus has been on Matilda’s, they’re not giving up on Más Amable. They’ll continue Saturday night dinners at Sauvage, albeit monthly. They’re also taking on passion projects, like a recently sold-out dinner hosted with Issam Rafea, the musician and composer, and Layali Al-Sham, ASU’s Middle East music ensemble. 

The benefit of a collective is that its chefs can be in several places at once.

“We’re not going to stop with Más Amable, we’re not going to stop with Irma,” Petry says. “If anything, Matilda’s will give us even more firepower to keep doing (them).”

Matilda’s owner, McConville, also wants to see Más Amable continue. The cafe could be just the start of their collaboration.

“This was a really great next step for Matt and his trajectory and his career and his food,” McConville says. “My hope is that we can continue to partner and grow together in other ways and see how I can support him and his dreams as well.”

Whether that means this partnership grows into another restaurant or the Más Amable crew scores an investor and finally stakes out a place of their own is anyone’s guess. They’re trying to write a hit. You can’t force it.

Celaya is realistic. He knows budding restaurateurs can do everything right and still fail. In the face of the risk, he pushes forward with Más Amable.

“I don’t think any of us saw it going where it ended up,” he says of the pop-up. “When it’s received and recognized, it feels like a dream.”