Of the more than 3,700 restaurants Michelin has awarded stars, only six are listed on its website as exclusively vegan – and only one of those is in Asia.
The success of Légume, which got its first star in the Michelin Guide Seoul and Busan 2025, is remarkable given how uncommon and often misunderstood veganism is in South Korea.
Sung Si-woo opened his restaurant in Seoul in 2023 after deciding to bet on his unconventional idea of a vegan fine-dining establishment.
Few believed it would work – even Sung had doubts.
“When I opened Légume, I invested more money than I’d ever earned in my life, so a lot of people tried to talk me out of it,” the chef-owner says at a cafe in Sinsa-dong, the trendy neighbourhood where his restaurant is located.
“They’d say things like, ‘Is Korea really ready for this? Do we even have enough vegans here?’ But I just felt strongly that I should pursue what I wanted while I was still young.”