Best restaurant for a first date: "I have to go with Comet Ping Pong on this one. It’s a great chance for each party to prove they don’t take themselves too seriously. I mean, would you really want to date someone who refuses to drink beer and play Ping-Pong?"
Amanda McClements, Capital Comment Blog
"Comet was a revelatory moment. The instant the pizza made contact with my mouth I knew I had a winner."
Jamie R. Liu, DCist
Only thing better would have been if I was in that pizza suit when the Apes were performing. But hey, you gotta do what you gotta do.
Valerie Raneri, Evolve Happy
This throwback pizza joint celebrates delicious thin-crust pies....tabletops in the cavernous dining room are painted green to resemble Ping-Pong tables, reminding guests that after dinner, they can head to the back to play!
Amanda McClements, Where to Eat Now, Food & Wine Magazine
"I love going to Comet Ping Pong to play Ping-Pong. It's one of my favorite places to eat and drink. And who doesn't love Ping-Pong?"
Septime Webre, Artistic Director, Washington Ballet
Get served at Comet Ping Pong, a hipster-heavy pizza parlor in the Upper Northwest with rough concrete walls, bathrooms hidden behind secret panels, and table tennis galore. Thin-crust pies from the wood-burning oven are as much of an attraction as the regularly scheduled live bands.
David Sax, New York Magazine
It's not often that, on your way into a punk rock show, you have to carefully skirt around the band members, for fear of interrupting their ping-pong match. Or that, while waiting for the bands to finish setting up, you join a roomful of families in a rendition of "Happy Birthday," directed at a beaming girl seated in front of an ice cream sundae. Then again, Comet Ping Pong, the noted upper Northwest pizza parlor/ping pong establishment, isn't your average venue. Recalling both the DIY ethos and multitasking charm of Chicago's storied Fireside Bowl, Comet turns out to be the ideal venue for a band like Mika Miko, who are known as much for their involvement with L.A. all-ages performance space The Smell as their back-to-basics take on three-chord punk rock.
Mehan Jayasuriya, DCist
"Comet Ping Pong should be a destination for anyone who cares about contemporary art. The restaurant itself is a work of art — it could be an exhibit in the Tate Modern — a tongue-in-cheek masterwork, so full of playful references that you might forget how brilliantly executed it is."
Don Rockwell, Washington Public Radio Restaurant Critic