A hunk of burning love with a side of prawn dhansak: It's Asian Elvis night at Spices

When a friend invited me to our local curry house for "Asian Elvis night", I accepted for two reasons. First, Spices in Datchet is one of the best Indian restaurants in the Southeast, and I've had precious little of this delicious but diet-dangerous cuisine since taking Weight Watchers seriously. Second, it had to be good for a laugh.

I've never been a huge Elvis fan, and my impression of impersonators had them solidly in the trashy but entertaining ranks of American tackiness. Somewhere above "See Rock City" snow globes and Pez dispensers and below a dinner of Kraft macaroni and cheese followed by Marshmallow Fluff. I was expecting a few interludes of really bad karaoke and crazy costumes slipped in between the courses of a fabulous meal.

How wrong I was. The guy was good. Really good.

Sal Bashir (www.sallikeelvis.co.uk) has a fine, mellow voice with the same deep timbre that helped Presley send a shiver down millions of female spines. I'm sure an expert could tell the difference, but to my unrefined ears, if I weren't watching Sal do his thing I would not have been able to differentiate between him and a recording of the real thing.

Of course, you need more than the voice to get this Elvis thing right. Sal has the moves, the costumes, the personality and some fine sound equipment. His show splits in two, a first half dedicated to the early years neatly wedged between starters and mains, the second half moving on to the later '60s and '70s after dinner. Obviously a huge Elvis fan, Sal's musical selection takes in both the classics and a range of songs that an Elvis amateur like me had never heard, but enjoyed. The magic of digital recording means that he has a wealth of top quality backing tracks behind him, leaving him to get on with the singing or, occasionally, with his own guitar. His costumes were evocative of The King but didn't descend into that paunchy, fringe-encrusted Vegas look that's often used to send Elvis into farce territory.

This was all about the music. (Proven by the fact that I walked away with a list of Elvis tunes I really must get onto my iPod to accompany the only two tracks there at the moment. "Viva Las Vegas" entered the collection when I was compiling background music for a charity casino night, while "A little less conversation, a little more action" is one of my favourite anthems on the playlist I use to gird myself for a tough day at the office.) And that music was wonderfully augmented by performance.

I can't emphasise how surprising this was, merely from a logistics point of view. Spices is the typical small English restaurant, long and narrow with six or seven tables on each side and a strip of open space down the middle. I would never have called it a performance venue. Yet Sal managed to work that little strip of floor like it was a proper stage, somehow slipping in expansive dance moves without ever looking constrained by his boundaries. He worked the crowd like a proper, old fashioned "entertainer", serenading ladies and getting couples up to dance.

Should you ever spot a promotion for Sal in your local curry house, book a table quick. Forget about the comedy value; you're on for a proper concert.