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Only 20km from Cape Town, and yet worlds apart from the city, is one of South Africa's oldest townships.
Gugulethu is where real Africa plays out; where people are for the most part poor; where the privileged feel threatened (often unnecessarily so) and where, when you take a closer look, some of Africa's most amazing and friendly people live.
It's on a dusty Gugulethu ('Gugs' to locals) street corner that you'll find Mzoli's. Mzoli's is a fast-growing best kept secret.
Essentially a butchery, folks pop in, choose their chops and then head around the corner for a table at the simple, open-sided restaurant.
At the back of the butchery, while the meat is swathed in secret sauce and fired up on a barbecue, guests hang out in the restaurant while township life plays out on the corner.
School kids walk, drunken village idiots put Xhosa hexes on anyone in their path and fashionable 'playas' (young and old) strut down the street in white linen suits and polished brown loafers.
Sitting at a simple, steel-topped trestle table somewhere in Cape Town's Gugulethu township, a large group of us tucked into boerewors (savoury sausage), chops, mielie pap (starchy corn mash) and spicy bean washing the thick mouthfuls of sticky barbecue meat down with long gulps from quarts of cool beer.
We had come to Mzoli's for a farewell lunch for one of our business associates and despite the goodbye vibe, spirits were high – thanks to Mzoli and his meat mamas.
The amount of food was too much for even the biggest of us boys, massive pieces of meat floated around our insides atop the litres of beer slapping around in our stomachs, bumping into the corners of our guts every now and then.
Across the road from Mzoli's a handful of homes double-up as shebeens (makeshift bars), and so ordering another round takes on the flavour of sending someone (do it yourself or send a restaurant runner) across the road, to step into a hefty mama's (mother) home and buying some big beer from her kitchen fridge.
It was a quite Thursday afternoon at Mzoli's for us, with a few tables filling up as the day unfolded, with locals and foreigners alike. Near us, two beautiful women were sitting with sundresses, sunglasses and bare feet.
A few fashionable young guys sat at a table to our right and some businessmen sat drinking beers in the corner, trying not to get their loud ties to drunk.
We were a mixed crew, all here from different circumstance but for the same reason- to eat and drink with friends and family.
Fellowship over food – it's the oldest tradition in the book, and something that is often lost in the modern world of cyber cafes, trendy restaurants and organic food fads.
The inside word is that celebrities, politicians and the growing affluent African middle class of Cape Town have made Mzoli's their favourite haunt for some time now.
I'll definitely be back and next time I'll stay well into the evening to see just how loud and lively it gets.
For a truly no-frills African experience where you can sit right in the thick of it, hire a driver, get inside a car and get yourself down to Mzoli's the butcher for a flavour-filled afternoon that'll put you on a beer-fuelled buzz to last you well into the night.
Contact Mzoli's to make a reservations:
Tel: +27 (0)21 638 1355
Mobile +27 (0)78 606 7405
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