Still, the man from Brittany would not turn coq au vin to butter chicken by adding chilli or turmeric powder. But a lover of Thai cuisine, he would reach out for basil leaves and tangy lemon grass and ginger. “While the cuisine of Spain, Italy and other regions of Europe has changed, the French food is still the same. So I decided to innovate a little,” he says. Tilly’s love for Asian cuisine began sometime ago at Morton’s Club in London which served continental as well as Asian cuisine. “My chef once threw a challenge at me — to make scallops with carrots.” And a baffled Tilly added fried cumin seeds and baby carrots — instead of béchamel sauce — to scallops. Fusion hasn’t left him since.