Two businesses on Putney High Street have quietly disappeared in recent weeks. Neither has made a public announcement. Both are gone.
Raitakrai
For years, Raitakrai offered one of the better-value lunches on Putney High Street: Thai and Chinese dishes, proper heat, good prices. You chose from a range of options and they came in takeaway containers, which sat oddly with the wooden booths and the effort that had gone into the room. It closed without explanation before Christmas, reopened briefly, then went dark again in February.
We have heard the business was in trouble and a High Court claim for unpaid debt is what finally killed it off – although we have been unable to confirm that and have tried unsuccessfully to contact the owners to find out what happened. The restaurant closed without notice last month. A month later, the built-up post and the interior had been cleared.
If you’re looking for Thai we can heartily recommend Lila Thai on Upper Richmond Road by Charlwood Road and next to the dry cleaners. They also do a really good lunch special.
Coffee Miyagi
The story of Coffee Miyagi is more specific, and its loss is sharper.
It opened on Chelverton Road in July 2025 with something clear to offer: high-grade matcha imported from Ise, a tea-growing region on Japan’s Pacific coast, and single-origin beans roasted on site. The owner was a professional coffee roaster; the front of house was behind the hand-whisked matcha. It was the kind of place that had thought carefully about what it was doing.
The location was always difficult. Chelverton Road sits set back from the High Street, in a small cluster of three shops near the bus station. The other two units have been shut for years, one of them visibly deteriorating. Miyagi was the exception in a row that had otherwise given up.
On 17 January it announced a temporary closure for an indoor seating fit-out. It has not reopened. The website and social media have been silent since January. Paper is now up in the windows.
The timing is hard to separate from what was happening on the High Street itself. In October 2025, Blank Street Coffee announced it was opening on Putney High Street, having built its brand on viral matcha drinks that account for roughly half its daily sales. That was Miyagi’s niche, brought to a better-positioned site with considerably more marketing behind it.
It’s a shame – we were looking forward to seeing what came out of this venture run by energetic young people putting the product first. We also feel we can now tell readers an interesting snippet about the building. When the team from Miyagi moved in- the shop had been empty for years – they found a cannabis-growing operation in the basement, which they cleared out.
Putney’s High Street is not moving in one direction. Four new businesses opened or were announced this week alone. But the closures keep coming alongside the openings, and the ones that leave without a word are the hardest to account for.
Both were independents. Both had something specific to offer. Neither felt able to say goodbye.
