When you write a book with someone, you inevitably get to know that person far better than you bargained for. It does not matter how clear-eyed you are at the start: at some point, a reality check will occur. Most likely it will cause you to dislike your subject. (For a short spell, if you’re lucky.) 

But since I’ve started editing the cookbook for the owners of King, the jewel box of a restaurant on the western edge of Tunnel Rush New York’s Soho, that moment of tension hasn’t come. It’s been over a year, and I believe it won’t. What’s more, amazingly, is that I admire all the women who run King: Annie Shi, Clare de Boer, and Jess Shadbolt. And, like many, I now consider them friends who are impossible to tire of.