Customize your soontofu with seafood, as shown, or many other options.

SUN LOS LEE grew up in a restaurant family; her parents took over the Prince in Koreatown in 1991, serving pajeon and fried chicken alongside martinis and highballs while maintaining the bar’s ageless, crimsonsoaked kitsch from its days as the Windsor. For her own restaurant, Lee traveled to Korea to study traditional tofu-making and landed on an unconventional technique: She found that using black soybeans gives bean curd a flavor that hints of sesame and peanuts. At Surawon Tofu House, where small cauldrons of soondubu jjigae arrive boiling volcanically, choose between the typical white tofu or (my preference) the black-soybean variation. Both are made in-house. It’s one of many customization options the menu presents, including additions of kimchi, oxtail, vegetables, oysters, intestines and an assorted mix of beef or pork with seafood. Among levels of heat, which range from “plain” to “extra spicy,” I find “spicy” to be pulse-quickening but not punishing.

• 2833 W. Olympic Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 383-7317, instagram.com/surawontofu