Cosmopolitan

Four-storey restaurant established by entrepreneurial Pan-Africanist Ras Makonnen in the mid-1940s which was popular with black American troops and West Indian service personnel. Provided a mix of Chinese, Indian and West Indian cuisine while the dining rooms had been painted with murals by an Jewish refugee from Austria. Managed for a time by Jomo Kenyatta who would become the first Prime Minister and then President of Kenya (1963-78), the profits of the business were used to support the 1945 Pan-African Congress.

Source: Makonnen, Pan-Africanism from within (1975), pp.137-139