I've been arguing for a while now, that Comet has been since its beginnings been an ambitious restaurant and a busy popular restaurant for years. And if it and Bucks were being operated solely as fronts, they wouldn't need to go as far as they do. People were on here saying there must be some other reason other than food that they got on the food network. This review from what appears to be some serious pizzaheads
But it can’t have escaped Pastan’s notice that the arrival of Comet Ping Pong has given Cleveland Park residents two exceptionally good gourmet pizza places—Comet and 2 Amys—to choose from.
The other half, of course, is the pizza. High-quality ingredients aside—Greenwood canned 2,000 pounds of Toigo Farms tomatoes in advance of opening—this is, in the New Haven tradition, a decidedly oily pie, and with a bolder, more vibrant taste than the pizzas at 2 Amys.
Opened just a year, Comet now serves pies that rival those at 2 Amys as the area’s best. For 15 years, if you wanted gourmet pizza in DC, you were limited to buying the Paradiso/2 Amys model with all its assumptions. No longer.
Yes, but you have to present the overall picture. The place certainly had its champions regarding the food. That's enough to keep a restaurant legit busy. Also that thread is the pizza cognoscenti. They got a two star review in the Post their most recent time. That's excellent. Yelp reviews are 3.5 out of 5. So more good than bad.
No, after researching a bunch of glowing reviews before PG happened, I have found that lots of the reviewers from big "Pizza snobs" came after JA asked them to review CPP, or they came from magazines/blogs that have a connection with JA or Greenwood. I'm not saying there are no genuine good reviews, but lots of them are biased as hell and definitely not representative of your average customer base.
There are other reviews that say the food isn't good. But anyway, I don't see why it would negate all the other evidence, that they make good pizza? Pizza is not really that difficult to get wrong, for a start, and what would you expect, a 'restaurant' with few tables and someone who chucks a frozen pizza in the oven exasperatedly if a genuine customer comes in?
The fact it's a real restaurant and that people enjoy their food is irrelevant. I genuinely can't believe there are people such as yourself, who have presumably looked through a lot of the posts here, seen the information about the other mysterious buildings, the connections, the insanely unlikely coincidences on top of statistically improbable coincidences, and still think that there is nothing going on here! I don't get it I really don't.
Personal anecdote here: Years ago, my mother had a paper route, and one of her deliveries was to a convenience store that also sold plate lunches. Mom was on casually friendly terms with the store owner, who frequently offered to babysit my younger brother while Mom finished her paper route. She always declined the offer, but a few years later, we read that the store owner was arrested for making, possessing, and distributing child pornography. The children involved were the children of customers, whom he offered to babysit. The parents were low-income people, possibly single parents, who needed a babysitter while they worked. I don't remember now how many children were involved, or what their ages were. I do remember something about a local police officer being arrested for possession of child porn. I think the officer was a friend of the convenience store owner, but I could be mistaken. The officer in question was in possession of some Traci Lords videos. I'm not sure if he also possessed some of the store owner's videos (assuming, of course, that the two cases were related).
In an unrelated case, a local police officer was arrested for allegedly raping a woman in the city park. In yet another unrelated case, a local cop offered one of my then-16-year-old friends a chance to get rid of her boyfriend's DUI ticket by going on a "date" with him. That cop later killed himself after he was fired for posting Photoshopped pictures of a dead teenager on the Internet.
I don't know that that is often. But I was responding to people who denied it was popular or had a good reputation. They were not making the argument you just made that legit business could be used.
Further down the thread you'll see someone who went to CPP based on this review and they didn't like it. It's a common theme I have seen while digging, one or two will say it is a good, then other people come in and say it was boring or even bad.
who are among the very best pizza makers in the US. One is in Phoenix and one is in Brooklyn. It seems the poster made pilgrimages just to eat their pizza.
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AreWeSure ago
I've been arguing for a while now, that Comet has been since its beginnings been an ambitious restaurant and a busy popular restaurant for years. And if it and Bucks were being operated solely as fronts, they wouldn't need to go as far as they do. People were on here saying there must be some other reason other than food that they got on the food network. This review from what appears to be some serious pizzaheads
ConcernedParent2 ago
If you read further in that thread, others say Comet isn't good, a common theme I have seen since I've been digging.
AreWeSure ago
Yes, but you have to present the overall picture. The place certainly had its champions regarding the food. That's enough to keep a restaurant legit busy. Also that thread is the pizza cognoscenti. They got a two star review in the Post their most recent time. That's excellent. Yelp reviews are 3.5 out of 5. So more good than bad.
ConcernedParent2 ago
No, after researching a bunch of glowing reviews before PG happened, I have found that lots of the reviewers from big "Pizza snobs" came after JA asked them to review CPP, or they came from magazines/blogs that have a connection with JA or Greenwood. I'm not saying there are no genuine good reviews, but lots of them are biased as hell and definitely not representative of your average customer base.
AreWeSure ago
The Washington Post's restaurant critic is very good and he's given good review at least three different times
SpikyAube ago
There are other reviews that say the food isn't good. But anyway, I don't see why it would negate all the other evidence, that they make good pizza? Pizza is not really that difficult to get wrong, for a start, and what would you expect, a 'restaurant' with few tables and someone who chucks a frozen pizza in the oven exasperatedly if a genuine customer comes in?
Child and human trafficking has often been linked to restaurants: http://www.wthr.com/article/human-trafficking-concerns-prompted-teppanyaki-grill-raid This guy had a very successful restaurant, opened a second one, and was trafficking young girls from India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakireddy_Bali_Reddy This popular pizza place in St Louis, which was also a karate studio and 'kid friendly' and whose owner was also very involved in the community, was busted for trafficking kids and making child porn: http://www.riverfronttimes.com/newsblog/2016/04/15/dojo-pizza-indictment-contains-more-victims-even-worse-child-porn-allegations
The fact it's a real restaurant and that people enjoy their food is irrelevant. I genuinely can't believe there are people such as yourself, who have presumably looked through a lot of the posts here, seen the information about the other mysterious buildings, the connections, the insanely unlikely coincidences on top of statistically improbable coincidences, and still think that there is nothing going on here! I don't get it I really don't.
zoltan907 ago
Personal anecdote here: Years ago, my mother had a paper route, and one of her deliveries was to a convenience store that also sold plate lunches. Mom was on casually friendly terms with the store owner, who frequently offered to babysit my younger brother while Mom finished her paper route. She always declined the offer, but a few years later, we read that the store owner was arrested for making, possessing, and distributing child pornography. The children involved were the children of customers, whom he offered to babysit. The parents were low-income people, possibly single parents, who needed a babysitter while they worked. I don't remember now how many children were involved, or what their ages were. I do remember something about a local police officer being arrested for possession of child porn. I think the officer was a friend of the convenience store owner, but I could be mistaken. The officer in question was in possession of some Traci Lords videos. I'm not sure if he also possessed some of the store owner's videos (assuming, of course, that the two cases were related).
In an unrelated case, a local police officer was arrested for allegedly raping a woman in the city park. In yet another unrelated case, a local cop offered one of my then-16-year-old friends a chance to get rid of her boyfriend's DUI ticket by going on a "date" with him. That cop later killed himself after he was fired for posting Photoshopped pictures of a dead teenager on the Internet.
AreWeSure ago
I don't know that that is often. But I was responding to people who denied it was popular or had a good reputation. They were not making the argument you just made that legit business could be used.
ConcernedParent2 ago
Further down the thread you'll see someone who went to CPP based on this review and they didn't like it. It's a common theme I have seen while digging, one or two will say it is a good, then other people come in and say it was boring or even bad.
AreWeSure ago
Another person on that board mentions these two
Chris Bianco Dom DeMarco
who are among the very best pizza makers in the US. One is in Phoenix and one is in Brooklyn. It seems the poster made pilgrimages just to eat their pizza.