The New Florence, Longton: Alan Cookman's restaurant review

IT WAS the night of the big match, and Herself had absented herself from the kitchen for the evening.

She'd commandeered the sofa and was installed in front of the telly in her Man U top, scarf and bobble hat (she had to put the rattle away because it put the cat in a coma).

This is a slight exaggeration, in fact it's a gross exaggeration, but it was made clear to us that Herself did not intend to miss a split second of the action in Rome.

The fact is that since her teenage great-nephew was signed up to be one of Old Trafford's stars of tomorrow, my significant other has thrown in her lot with The Reds.

She is not so much a WAG as an AGA – adoring great aunt.

The upshot of this newfound allegiance to Fergie's lot was that on the evening of the champions league final it was every man for himself in the chow department.

An ardent Stoke City follower who takes a dim view of his mother's treachery, The Son & Heir proposed a pre-match visit to The New Florence where we could avail ourselves of the two-steaks-for-the-price-of-one deal.

The New Florence is a big, modern family pub on the site of the old Florence Colliery. It features a Wacky Warehouse, although we felt that a Wacky Coal Mine, where kiddies could dig for simulated coal in a simulated pit, would be more appropriate.

The deal here is that when you buy one main dish, a second comes free, provided you have a companion to eat it (gluttons are not allowed to order two meals for themselves).

We started with one of the sharing starter platters (£6.69) consisting of breaded mushrooms, crispy coated Thai prawns, chicken wings, Southern fried chicken pieces and meatballs in tomato sauce, with toasted garlic bread and a sour cream dip.

The breaded mushrooms were predictably unexciting and the Thai prawns, although pleasantly flavoured, seemed to rattle around loose inside their crispy shells, crustacean and coating existing independently of each other.

Chicken wings yield so little edible fowl that the effort of extracting meat from bone seems a complete and utter waste of time, so I didn't bother.

On the other hand, the seemingly overdone Southern fried chicken pieces contained warm, lean and succulent meat and could be eaten without getting the fingers greasy.

The meat balls might more accurately be described as mush balls, although the tomato sauce was delicious.

Instead of a steak, I ordered half a roast chicken (£9.79) basted with piri piri sauce, to which I recklessly added extra dollops of the piquant salsa from the dish on the side.

So while the chicken was perfectly acceptable, my mouth was like a furnace by the time I'd finished it.

Dry and undistinguished, the allegedly "dressed salad" could have been arrested for indecent exposure, and I didn't fancy getting to grips with any of the little sachets in the pot on our table.

I reminded The Son & Heir that my chicken was free, whereas we'd be paying £11.79 for his 10oz ribeye steak, so he'd jolly well better enjoy it.

I needn't have bothered, for the steak was cooked in strict accordance with his instructions (medium rare) and it looked like a choice slab of meat, thick, juicy and oozing blood.

We skipped dessert and got home shortly after the kick-off, in time to see Eto's 10th minute goal put Barcelona in front.

We would have commiserated with Herself over this setback, but she'd dozed off during the 45-minute preamble to the fixture and was out for the count.