Taxi drivers are the best people to ask about home-style Zulu food joints. Consider it - they work long hours, sometimes from as early as 3am until as late as 7pm - ferrying an endless stream of often irritable strangers. Under those circumstances, few drivers have the time and energy to pack lunch hence the thriving taxi rank "fast food" industry.One well-regarded driver haunt is Nkonka's Fast Food and Takeaway, which opened on Brazo Mngadi Street near a KwaDabeka township taxi rank earlier this year.Named after cook Nokuthula Khanyase's grandfather, it is a family business built on the cooking skills she learned from the grandmother who raised her, Jabu. An uncle and her two siblings help out with the daily logistics of running the place.To step into the covered veranda that serves as a sit-down dining area is to step into the warm smell of frying vetkoek and - if you're black - a favourite memory of high school lunch. The menu boasts simple, standard township fare, well-executed.For breakfast there are scones, tea, egg, tomato chutney and quarter loaves of bread stuffed with sausages, eggs and chips. The frying vetkoek are a favourite with the schoolchildren who pass by every morning.The main lunch menu has rice, phuthu or pap with chicken or beef curry. Phuthu is a coarser, drier form of pap, cooked using a slightly higher ratio of mealie meal to salted boiling water than you would for the latter.There is something to be said for the weird delights of processed ingredient-filled stews that impersonate "curry" in township culture. But that is not what we're here for today - it is the "traditional plates" we are after.First emerges Khanyase with a big bowl of soapy water and a clean towel for our hands. Our order follows shortly after: thick-cut slices of jeqe (steamed bread) neatly piled on a side plate, and a bowl of tender, expertly cooked nhloko chunks in broth.Nhloko is meat from the head of a cow, considered a delicacy reserved only for men by some. It is not the only ''gendered" dish laid before us. Isigwaqane, the bowl of savoury bean phuthu, also goes by the humorous name maklinyinidoda - man choker.One theory - there are several - is that it is so called because it tends to stick in the throat if eaten without gravy as accompaniment. To serve it up plain to the man of the house is, culturally, a no-no.A pity for those who stick to that rule; it goes down as well with a cup of sweet black tea as it does gussied up with mfino (wild herbs or spinach), stew or a spicy sishebo. The spicy whiff of Khanyase's take on isigwaqane suggests she goes beyond the basics - there are spices in here, possibly butter as well, a hint of chilli. It's perfect. I'm afraid to ask what she puts in it - recipes are closely guarded in this industry.We alternate spoonfuls of it with a bowl of usu ne thumbu - bovine tripe and offal. There are probably as many Zulu people who cannot stand it as there are those, like me, who love the stuff.The first criterion for well-cooked tripe is that it be cleaned right - nothing puts you off offal like biting into a grain of sand. Khanyase's is immaculate.We down it while it's hot - once it cools its fat will congeal. It warms us from the inside out.The lowdownWhen to goWhen you're missing gogo's cooking and can't face another Woolies ready-meal.What to drinkSoft drinks, fruit juice or - if you need to stay awake for the rest of your driving shift - a sports drink.Whatever you doDon't allow yourself to get drawn into an argument with an angry regular. Everybody knows to ignore him. Also, try the samp.How much do you needR30 will get you fed like a king.WhereNear Protex Car Wash, Brazo Mngadi Avenue, kwaDabeka. Say "sawubona" to a local and ask for directions...