Raaz

Raaz (“secret”) opened in Putney in late 2025, initially with chef Imran Mansuri. From March 2026 the kitchen was been run by chef Kuldeep Mattegunta, who worked previously at Republic, and before that at Kricket. Prior to that he had worked at a series of smart restaurants including Benares, Nobu Park Lane and Quilon. By the time I visited in April he had moved to Chicago, and the latest head chef was Vinod Kumar, who had worked at restaurants as varied as Masala Zone, Trishna, Gymkhana, Kricket and Jamavar. 

The dining room was in three sections, with the initial main room including the bar, and a separate room at the back with a skylight. The menu mixed familiar dishes like butter chicken with some unusual variations on classic dishes, such as bhel poori with avocado and wasabi. Beer was Stella Artois and there was also a short wine list. 

We started with a basket of popadoms (£6), accompanied by chutneys that were made in the kitchen: mango, curry leaf yoghurt and a winter squash chutney. We tried the unusual bhel poori dish (£8). There were a number of issues with it: the avocado was not ripe and was very hard. The bhel (a mix of puffed rice and sev) should be crunchy but seemed stale. The addition of pieces of tomato was not an improvement on the classic formula, while some strands of radish as garnish were at least harmless. The wasabi flavour was quite limited, and I suspect that this was wasabi from a tube (coloured horseradish or mustard) rather than freshly grated wasabi root, which has a much subtler flavour and is an expensive ingredient. I am a fan of bhel poori but this did not work well at all and we left most of it (9/20). No one in the service team seemed particularly curious about  the barely touched bhel poori. Better was a pair of tandoori lamb chops with ginger (£14), which were cooked so that there was at least a tinge of pink in the middle. They were fine, but came with a pile of cold peas, which did not add anything (12/20). 

For the main course, chicken tikka biryani (£14) came in a pot with a puff pastry case, as is traditional. This seals in the fragrances and is a nice touch; a lot of London restaurants skip this important step when serving biryani. The chicken was not dry and the rice was fairly aromatic, flavoured with spices including cloves (13/20). Also good was a black dhal (£11), which had good texture and plenty of rich, slightly smoky flavour (13/20). Both garlic naan (£4) and lacha paratha (£5) arrived hot and had pleasing texture (13/20). Sadly, a pair of large tandoori prawns (£16.50) were badly overcooked, mushy and disappointing (9/20). We pointed this out having tried each, but there was no effort to replace them, and they stayed on the bill at the end, which was frustrating. These came with a mint and coriander chutney and a dill raita. Much better were “gunpowder potatoes” (£9), new potatoes that are grilled and tossed in a blend of dry spices. These retained a level of firmness and had good spicing (13/20).

We tried two desserts, a mango sorbet (£7) and a gajar halwa cheesecake (£9), which were fine but were not made in the kitchen. Service was pleasant, and the bill came to £67 each. This was a rather erratic meal. The good bread, dhal and biryani are evidence that the kitchen can deliver nice dishes, but the bhel poori was poorly conceived and the tandoori prawns were just poorly cooked.