Is it the robots delivering cast iron pots of soup? Or the seamless QR code ordering? Maybe it's the location, in the attractive open-air plaza at the southern end of The Glen shopping centre. Whichever detail you land on, DooBoo feels modern, even futuristic.

Dig in though – to the bubbling tofu hotpot that is this Korean restaurant's delicious signature, or to the rigour that underpins the popular quick-service diner – and you realise that DooBoo's project is to honour tradition.

DooBoo is a phonetic rendering of "tofu" in Korean. "Soon dooboo" (also "sundubu") means "pure" (or soft) tofu. Extend that to "sundubu-jjigae" and you get a famous dish: soft tofu in a spicy soup.

At DooBoo, the soup base is a carefully calibrated fermented paste of crab, pork belly, lard, shrimp sauce and chilli. (There's also a mild version and a vegetarian option, seasoned with soy.)

The paste is made in a central kitchen by expert Korean aunties, then split between three DooBoo restaurants in the CBD, Box Hill and The Glen. The special unpasteurised silky tofu is made off-site to DooBoo's specifications and delivered daily, too.

When an order comes in, the base is thinned into an intense soup of beguiling depth. Extra ingredients are ladled into individual pots – pipis, pork belly, egg, vegetables – and then each serve is burbled for nine minutes 20 seconds on an induction stove. A wheelie robot ferries it to diners along with banchan (snacks).

DooBoo is the creation of Andrew Kim, an architect who opened Seoul Soul, his first Korean restaurant, a decade ago. At the time, Melbourne's Korean dining scene was mostly stuck on royal cuisine, serving elaborate traditional banquets. Kim wanted to reflect zippy contemporary Seoul so his restaurant specialised in one-bowl meals served apace.

Over time, speedy K-Pop food became all the rage (Kim himself owns Samsam, a fried chicken specialist where robots staff the deep-fryer) and the architect-restaurateur came full circle.

With contemporary Korean the new normal, he returned to tradition with DooBoo, albeit a version that's only possible via modern efficiencies – robots, remote ordering, a production kitchen. Innovation makes ongoing staff shortages manageable and, crucially, ensures the soup is consistently excellent.

Sundubu-jjigae comes with rice cooked in the iron vessel it's served in. The idea is to scoop out the rice and leave the nutty crust stuck to the base, add hot water from a supplied kettle, replace the lid, wait five minutes, give it a stir, then eat the thin, slightly caramelised rice porridge that results. It's a comforting fill-the-crannies customary end to a sundubu meal.

There are other dishes. Pork cutlet is bashed thin and crumbed with fresh bread crumbs to create the king-sized super-crisp donkatsu. Tteokbokki is a chilli-laced street-food stir-fry of fat starchy noodles. Corn cheese is a sizzlingly wonderful kernel-studded mozzarella stretch laced with butter and mayo.

But really, you're here for the namesake dooboo, slippery soft and succulent in a jiggly and joyous jjigae.