This is the famous lard-laden Kim Keat Fried Hokkien Mee at Block 92, Toa Payoh Lorong 4:

If you've not tried it before, it is time you extract yourself from the rock you've been under and get some now.

It has received rave reviews even though the stall has been opened for less than two years.

Other than the fact that it is served in a claypot (which makes it look unique), comes with copious amounts of lard and zhup and taste just like heaven -- if heaven was indeed made out of noodles -- the secret to its awesomeness might just be the cook himself.

According to The Sunday Times on Dec, 20, 2015, Kim Keat Fried Hokkien Mee is opened by a guy who spent a good part of his life on heroin and high as a kite. 😱😱😱

Hey, I'd trust a guy who has known what satisfaction means on any given day.

The most thug life Fried Hokkien Mee ever in the universe

The owner, Lee Eng Keat, 55 (pictured above) -- somewhat of a media darling these days -- has been in and out of prison countless times, according to ST.

In all, he has received 34 strokes of the cane and spent nearly 20 years behind bars.

He is a divorcee, who has one son and two stepdaughters aged between 35 and 41 -- and five grandchildren, aged between five and 21.

As a love child who never knew his father, Lee misspent his youth by quitting Anderson Secondary School at 14, engaging in mugging and extortion at 15 (and got arrested only on his second try), being sent to remand and having his eyes opened to the underworld after just three years in a boys' home in Clementi.

He was just 17 by then.

He then experimented with heroin and became an illegal hawker.

At 20, he was arrested and sent to the Sembawang Drug Rehabilitation Centre (DRC) for 12 months. His wife gave birth to their son when he was released in 1981.

He went back to illegal hawking and started pimping with his stable of 17 foreign sex workers who were put up in an apartment in Balestier.

He admitted he didn't grasp the concept of guilt.

In 1988, he decided to help out his stepfather who had secured a hawker stall in Toa Payoh Central. He had at that time, learnt how to cook crowd-pleasing Hokkien Mee from another hawker and was earning a decent amount to support his families.

But he tried heroin again.

He was nabbed while trying to score a fix in 1989. The DRC became his second home as he was arrested several more times over the next decade.

His wife subsequently filed for divorce. Their son had turned 18 and he failed as a father.

With the divorce, there was no holding back and he upgraded from drug addict to drug dealer. He was arrested twice for drug trafficking.

Before starting his first jail stint, he was banging a hawker's daughter 13 years his junior. Her family disapproved.

However, she committed suicide in 2006 after she overdosed, having fought with Lee after he was released from prison.

Subsequently, trying to turn his life around, he worked as a bread delivery man but went back to peddling drugs and was sentenced to jail a second time.

In 2006, he was sentenced to 11 years, but was most likely out early because of good behaviour.

This final stint squatting in the slammer was when he really decided to turn over a new leaf after he had turned to religion and Kim Keat Fried Hokkien Mee was born. The stall was only opened in April 2014.

He started his current stall with nearly $20,000 and he sought the help of his former triad friends. His ex-wife and all his children pitched in to help.

Today, he sells more than 100 portions of Hokkien Mee in claypots or on opeh leaves.

His stall is opened every day except Tuesdays.

And he has been trying to woo back his ex-wife the past two years.

So, here is the moral of the story:

As long as you can fry some noodles that is tasty, whatever transgressions -- drugs, flesh trade, extortion etc. -- you had committed in the past shall be forgiven.

Actually, no. If he had been sentenced to death at any given point in time in the last two decades for drug-related offences, we wouldn't have tasty Hokkien Mee to eat.

Top photo via ieatandeat & sgfoodonfoot

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