Food that's tiptop and ready for eating (5)
I believe the answer is:
tripe
'food' is the definition.
(tripe is a kind of food)
'tiptop and ready for eating' is the wordplay.
'tiptop' becomes 't' (top of the word 'tip').
'and' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'ready for eating' becomes 'ripe' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
't'+'ripe'='TRIPE'
'that's' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for tripe that I've seen before include "Ox stomach as food - it's nonsense" , "Edible lining of cow's stomach - rubbish" , "Edible nonsense?" , "which a freegan might eat?" , "Ruminant's stomach lining" .)