When you’re meeting someone with a moniker like New York Nico, you defer to their expertise to pick the spot. This wasn’t New York Nico’s first time at Anthony & Son Panini Shoppe, an old-school Italian sandwich shop. It’s among the 100 hand-selected New York hotspots and hidden gems included in his brand-new book, New York Nico’s Guide to NYC.
Part secret history, part citywide tour, the loving crafted book is out now, painting a portrait of present-day New York City like never before, highlighting businesses around the boroughs with a deeper insight into the identity and history behind each one.
New York Nico, real name Nicolas Heller, typically spends most of his time behind the camera, capturing the lives, businesses, and events around New York City. Having amassed a total of nearly 3 million followers through Instagram and TikTok, Heller has an immense impact on the characters and businesses he showcases, often sending droves of new fans their way. Along with being a social media personality, the filmmaker produced various documentaries, music videos, commercials, and more under his own production company, Heller Films.
Whether you’re a tourist visiting the city, a recent transplant, or a New York native, New York Nico’s Guide to NYC is for everyone. When Heller initially decided to create the book, he wanted to make sure it wasn’t just for tourists looking for another overexposed attraction to visit in the city. He also wanted to cater to the locals of the neighborhoods he visited, giving them a back story of some of their favorite businesses.
“A lot of these spots … you might know about if you’re a local, but you don’t know their story. And that’s kind of like the essence of what my Instagram is,” Heller said. “It’s kind of like doing a deep dive into these places or people that you may see just passing on the street, you know you don’t know their story. That’s basically what I wanted to do with this book.”
The first thing you may notice about the book is its vibrantly illustrated cover. The front cover turns New York City into a frenetic cartoon dreamscape littered with many city-specific details like taxis driving through the streets, the corner hot dog cart, and iconic city landmarks such as Yankees Stadium in the Bronx and the Unisphere in Queens. Packed with a multitude of street caricatures and stylized businesses, the cover is something Heller wanted individuals to stare at for a while, with extended study rewarding viewers with Easter eggs.
The colorful illustrations for this book were heavily influenced by Bart Simpson’s Guide to Life, inspired by The Simpsons, and the famous Where’s Waldo? books.
“I knew immediately I wanted to do kind of like my take of ‘Where’s Waldo?’
With the help of Chris Wilson, illustrator and tattooer, the book cover came to life. After readers explore the city via the books unique perspective, they can get lost in the art, watching out for appearances from the people and places mentioned. Heller himself is hidden in the mix, as are many of the other New Yorkers profiled.
New York Nico’s Guide to NYC isn’t a typical guidebook that was made up by algorithm or committee in a week or two based on web data; it’s a document of a moment in New York City, which Heller describes in the introduction of the book.
“What’s special about this guidebook is that, you know it’s not the top 100 best places to eat or the best places to shop, it’s my favorite places,” he said. “It’s kind of like the essence of New York City, and a lot of that has to do with the people that work there, the people that go there, and how long it’s been around for – you know a lot of these businesses have been around for 20, 30, 50, even 100 years.”
Instead of relying on stock marketing images, the guidebook’s businesses were each photographed for the project by Jeremy Cohen. Heller, along with Cohen physically went to every single spot to document and photograph the businesses. This process of going from business to business was a vigorous part for Heller in the creation of the guidebook.
“I think we spent a year and a half going from business to business, and just to make things work in time we had to visit six businesses a day” Heller said..
Heller wanted to make sure that his guidebook did one of the most culturally diverse cities justice, by featuring all kinds of diverse places. “I didn’t wanna show just one cuisine, because that’s not New York. New York is everything. As far as the food goes, you have every sort of type of cuisine under the sun.”
That includes the classic New York sandwich shop, Anthony & Son Panini Shop in Williamsburg, the site of our interview with Heller. This Italian sandwich shop is more than just another business to Heller, it’s more like a second home to him now. He’s been friends with the owners for 8 years but has been going to the shop for even longer. “This place has sort of been a breeding ground of talent for me. I’ve met so many amazing people here.”
As much as the book is an accentuation of New York’s thriving small businesses community, it’s also an important reminder to support these local restaurants and retailers before it’s too late. Since Heller first started working on the book, eight businesses he profiled have closed their doors.
“It’s really sad, because, you know, you would love to see these businesses stick around forever, but just the way the world is going, it’s just impossible for a lot of these places to survive,” he said.
It’s the difficult reality that many small businesses in New York City are going through right now, many still facing economic hardship from the COVID-19 pandemic and struggling to keep their doors open. Heller’s ultimate goal is for the book to attract more foot traffic to these businesses so that they get to stay open for another 100 years. He wants the book to immortalize the selected businesses so that even they some day close down, they will forever be a part of history.
“These places mean a lot to me, and I just want them to stay around for a long time.”
New York Nico’s Guide to NYC is now available for purchase at harpercollins.com or wherever books are sold.
