Eating at a Mystery Book Author Reading

In my hometown there is a lot of crime - but mostly in books. We have a famous author who writes mystery novels for more then 10 years and most of the stories play around the city and the rural areas. His name is Michael Kibler.
His newest book was just released.
In a small restaurant in an older part of the city - the Vis à Vis - we had dinner during the reading of some of the chapters of the new book.
I was here with friends- a book blogger Uwes-Leselounge and a YouTuber  RosesandIvy77
The restaurant is often frequented by many students from all the different University parts. Many live around here. And one thing is crazy, finding a parking space in all that small streets.

Our dinner evening started with a wonderful Aperitiv. Reduced red wine syrup with some star anise and cinnamon, rhubarb syrup and some Prosecco. Delightful.

Then the author started to read from his book "Seelenraub" (Stolen souls).

First course was a soup, this restaurant is known to be a Soup Kitchen, so I was looking forward to it.

 
Pumpkin, sweetpotato and peanutbutter with roasted Austrian green pumpkin seeds. It was lightly spiced with some chili and very creamy.  But 2 tablespoons full of roasted green pumpkin seeds on top of the soup were a bit too much crunch. The taste nearly destroyed the peanut aroma. Maybe just half of it would made the soup a star of the dinner.

Now we heard more from the book- child abuse is a part of the mystery this time. 

The Main course was pork loin in Parmesan crust with saffron, white wine and lemon creamy sauce over pasta. The meat was fine and you could taste the cheese, put my pasta side was undercooked and stuck together. Not really a treat. The sauce that covered it tasted good and single saffron pieces could be seen.

The dessert was Panna Cotta with Raspberries.

Sorry to say, that was not ok.
The panna cotta had not enough gelatine in it, so it did not set and was lumpy, it was absolutely bland and not sweet enough. It missed vanilla beans a lot. The frozen raspberries were a mushy compote, it would have been a good alternative to make a couli out of them.

The author sat with us for a while and we asked questions. It was a great evening with nice food.