BEES Restaurant

A measured hand in the former distillery

Takayuki Honjo seasons by subtraction as Chef at BEES Restaurant in Rudesheim am Rhein, where the plate depends on what his hands leave alone. His cooking carries the restraint that marked Restaurant ES in Paris in 2012: seasonality, simplicity, delicacy and purity of flavour, with the season setting the frame rather than decorating it. At BEES, that discipline moves into a Rhine wine-country room housed in a former Asbach Uralt brandy distillery production site, opened as a restaurant in November 2021. The lineage published around Honjo is not a chain of named mentors or apprentices; it is clearer in method than in biography. The predecessor to the present work is the Paris chapter, where roast pigeon in cocoa sauce and guinea fowl with girolles and new potatoes were read for proportion and control. In Rüdesheim am Rhein, Takayuki Honjo keeps that same register at the pass, building dishes around seasonal clarity rather than display. The town gives him a precise kind of pressure: vineyards close by, the Rhine close enough to shape the appetite, and guests already trained by local wine to listen for acidity, ripeness and restraint.

A menu that changes by the month

The kitchen at BEES works through seasonal menus that change monthly, with set menus and à la carte choices arranged by flavour rather than by a rigid old sequence. French, African and international influences sit inside that structure, but the better word here is proportion. A course has to hold its own next to Rheingau wine without becoming heavy. The restaurant has built events around that same discipline, including Von der Knolle bis zum Blatt in September 2025, a vegetarian menu with Oelsberger Gartengemüse and wines from Weingut Leitz, and Ying und Yang in October 2025, pairing Mosel and Rheingau wines with Weingüter Wegeler. Those evenings make the method visible: local produce, regional bottles, and contrast used as a tool rather than a theme. The wine program favors Rheingau depth and selected bottles from beyond the region, with Leitz and Wegeler named in the restaurant’s own event work. In a town where wine can easily become the headline, Honjo’s kitchen asks it to act as a second hand at the bench.

The room, the pass and the courtyard

The room keeps some of the former distillery’s reserve without turning the building into a relic. Contemporary decor, low light and a partially visible kitchen make the pass part of the evening, not a stage set. The counterpoint is the courtyard, quieter than the tourist lanes Rüdesheim is known for, with a summer terrace set among vineyards. Service reads as upscale casual, which matters because the food is measured rather than ceremonious. Plates leave the kitchen into a warm, conversational room; the visible work is enough. In that setting, Honjo’s restraint has room to register. A poached egg, a crêpe, a glass from Weingut Leitz: each one depends on timing, temperature and the decision not to add more.