Gosari Express Sindang: The Vegan Noodle Shop Behind Seoul’s Michelin Green Star Buzz

Gosari Express in Sindang is a vegan noodle shop tucked into the Jungang Market area of Sindang-dong, Jung-gu, Seoul. For readers following Seoul’s plant-based dining scene, Gosari Express has become especially notable because it appears in the Michelin Guide Seoul & Busan 2026 selection as both a Bib Gourmand restaurant and a newly named Michelin Green Star restaurant. ¹

That double recognition gives the small shop a bigger story than a single menu trend. It connects a familiar Korean ingredient, gosari, or bracken fern, with a modern vegan noodle format that has been described through dishes such as gosari perilla bibim noodles and gosari noodle tteokbokki. ²

Gosari Express Sindang and Its Michelin Moment

Gosari Express Sindang Seoul vegan noodle shop concept

The Michelin Guide announced the full Michelin Guide Seoul & Busan 2026 restaurant selection on March 5, 2026. The edition included 233 restaurants in total, with 178 in Seoul and 55 in Busan. In that list, Gosari Express was named alongside Mitou in Seoul as a newly selected Michelin Green Star restaurant, and it was also marked as Bib Gourmand. ¹

The Bib Gourmand news had already put the restaurant on many food watchers’ radar. On February 26, 2026, the Michelin Guide announced its 2026 Bib Gourmand list, and the new Seoul selections included 3dae Samgyegjangin, Gosari Express, Sobakiri Suzu, Andeok, and Oilje. ² For a casual reader, that matters because Bib Gourmand is often associated with restaurants that are approachable rather than formal fine dining, while still carrying strong culinary interest.

The Green Star angle adds another layer. The Michelin release quoted Gwendal Poullennec as saying that Korea has developed into a “mature, confident, and multilayered gastronomic ecosystem.” ¹ Gosari Express fits naturally into that broader idea: it is not simply serving vegan food as a restriction, but presenting plant-based Korean noodles as something with its own mood, identity, and everyday appeal.

What Makes the Menu Stand Out

The clearest menu spotlight is gosari perilla bibim noodles. Cook&Chef News described Gosari Express as a vegan noodle specialist located in an alley of Jungang Market in Sindang-dong, Jung-gu, Seoul, and explained that the signature gosari perilla bibim noodles use gosari oil sauce, perilla powder, chickpea hummus, and vegetable chili oil. ³

That ingredient list helps explain why the restaurant has attracted attention beyond a simple “vegan restaurant” label. Gosari is a Korean ingredient many people associate with traditional dishes, while perilla brings a nutty, earthy note. Chickpea hummus points toward a broader plant-based pantry, and vegetable chili oil gives the dish a sharper, richer finish. Nothing in the available sources requires treating the dish as fusion for novelty’s sake; the more useful way to read it is as Korean noodle cooking stretched into a fresh vegan shape.

Other sources also describe the shop through a broader noodle identity. GQ Korea introduced Gosari Express as a Korean noodle shop for drinks that combines vegetarian food with an old-school neighborhood restaurant concept. The same article named it as the first dining brand from Bad Carrot and noted that it sells noodles made with gosari and seasonal vegetables. ⁴

That “everyday” framing is important. Chosun Ilbo, via Nate News, described the motto of Gosari Express in Sindang Jungang Market as “vegetarian food in everyday life,” and mentioned gosari noodle tteokbokki and gosari perilla bibim noodles. ² The phrase suggests a restaurant trying to make plant-based food feel familiar, repeatable, and rooted in daily eating rather than set apart as a special occasion.

From Bad Carrot to Home Meal Kits

The Gosari Express story also reaches beyond the restaurant itself. Wikitree reported that the shop opened in June 2024 in Sindang-dong Jungang Market, Seoul Jung-gu. The same report said chef Kim Je-eun first introduced gosari sauce and meal kits through the vegan food startup Bad Carrot, then moved into operating a store where the food could be cooked and sold directly. ⁵

That timeline helps make sense of why the brand appears both as a restaurant and as a packaged-food collaboration. On April 15, 2025, Shinsegae Group Newsroom announced that SSG.COM had collaborated with Gosari Express to sell four home meal replacement products online for the first time: gosari perilla bibim noodles, crown daisy noodles, gosari noodle tteokbokki, and gosari oil pasta sauce. Each was listed at 14,900 won. ⁶

The home version of gosari perilla bibim noodles was described as using 100% plant-based ingredients, including gosari oil sauce and domestic perilla. ⁶ For people who first encounter the name online rather than in Sindang, that detail is useful: Gosari Express is not only a place-based Seoul restaurant story, but also a brand whose key flavors have been adapted into convenient products.

GQ Korea also provided a practical restaurant detail, listing the address as 1F, 12-10 Toegye-ro 85-gil, Jung-gu, Seoul. ⁴ That location detail reinforces the specific Sindang focus behind the Michelin attention: this is a market-neighborhood noodle shop, not a detached luxury dining room.

Gosari Express Sindang gosari bibim noodles vegan Seoul trend

Gosari Express in Sindang stands out because its story is compact but layered: a vegan noodle shop in Jungang Market, a Bad Carrot-linked brand, a Bib Gourmand selection, and a new Michelin Green Star name in the 2026 Seoul and Busan guide. Most of all, it shows how a humble Korean ingredient like gosari can become the center of a warm, modern, fully plant-based dining identity.