🍸✨ Welcome to Crostinis & Martinis Party! In this elegant, flavor-packed episode, Chef Annie Payton teams up with Matthew McClure from Dress the Drink to pair 5 gourmet crostinis with creative martini cocktails.
🥖 On the Crostini Menu:
Lemon Ricotta & Pesto — drizzled with honey & garnished with DTD edible lemon slice
Prosciutto & Fig Chutney — layered with cream cheese & sweet-savory fig chutney
Blackberry Walnut Brie — topped with maple syrup & dark brown sugar drizzle
Orange-Infused Salami & Artichoke — with garlic herb cream cheese
Burrata & Basil Pesto — finished with a vibrant teardrop red pepper
🍸 And the cocktails? Matthew McClure from Dress the Drink stirs up creative Martinis crafted to perfectly match each crostini.
💡 In this episode, you’ll discover:
5 easy yet elegant crostini recipes for entertaining
How to pair crostinis with cocktails like a pro
Matthew McClure’s tips for next-level martinis using Dress the Drink garnishes & mixology flair
Food, cocktails, laughter, and unforgettable kitchen fun
🍷 Because memories are always made around the dinner table!
➡️ Subscribe for more Italian comfort food, cocktails, and kitchen party ideas with Chef Annie Payton.
Featuring @dressthedrink
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Memories are made around the dinner table. This is more than a cookbook. It’s a tribute to a mother, a mentor, and a best friend. Chef Annie Payton invites you into her kitchen and her heart as she shares the cherished memories and timeless recipes passed down from her beloved mother. Every page of this book is a celebration of family, friends, and the legacy of home-cooked meals. From Sunday dinners to soul soothing staples, these recipes are more than ingredients, their stories waiting to be shared again. Memories are made around the dinner table by Chef Annie Payton. Hi, welcome back. This is Annie’s Gourmet and Italian indulgence and today’s episode is martinis and christinis. So, we’ve paired this is my friend Matt and he is an part owner of Dress the Drink who have been our wonderful sponsors and they do drinks obviously drink drink garnishes and we’ve paired Christinis with martinis of all different flavors and we’re here to explain them to you. First, I just want to say a few things. A christini is bread. So in Italian, if someone says you’re having a Christini, it can be any type of bread, it can be soft, can be toasted, can be crunchy or or just um uh doughy. And um you can put any flavor you want on it. There’s not a wrong way to do it. We have several different kinds here. Uh Matthew and I have paired up five different Christinis and martinis, and the flavors should complement each other. And this type of a presentation you can do for a cocktail party, um a pre-wedding, like a a you know, an appetizer, a derf station, pre-dinner, uh that type of thing. Or you can have it as a happy hour, which is what we’re doing cuz we love to have happy hour. So if you ask my mom in college what my major was, it was partying. It was So I was I went to UNLV. Um, we’re located here. We are in Las Vegas right now. Uh, I’ve owned and operated Annie’s Gourmet Catering for almost 25 years. And we had restaurants in between, which is how I met Matthew. And, um, we have uh, um, been, this has been our home. I moved out here from Long Island, New York with my family in 1979. And I went to high school here for a few years and then I went to college. So when I was at UNLV, hospitality was a big uh major and I joined a sorority, Delta Zeta sorarity and um I was the social chairman. So um we planned all kinds of fun things and um we had lots of great parties and um and dances and things like that with our fraternity friends and um it was just a great time. So, it inspired me to get into the party um uh profession and the party um inspiration was started way back when my mother said, “You didn’t go to college to learn, you went to party.” But I really did learn from it. So, um it’s uh you know, it’s taken me here through several decades and um and enjoying getting together with friends and family and um we we know food is love. We know everybody has to eat and drink. We know that it’s a a very important part of our lives. It’s important for birthdays and anniversaries and um any special occasion. We always gather around the dinner table or um the ordef table or whatever kind of um environment you have. But um we we like to make fun with it. Um I I have a tendency I love um the fire. I love water too. We have water elements. We do fire elements. um anything to make the presentation more fun because the more fun people have, the more memories they’re going to make and the more friends they’re going to make and the more contacts you’re going to make if it’s a business event. So, um you always want to um have join around the the the food table and the drinks are so important. The drinks are probably more important than the food. So, uh the food is the artistic element, but the drink is the tasty envelopment really. And you can make food. People like food before they even taste it. I’ve learned that all through my years as well. If it looks pretty, they like it even before they taste it. And if it smells good, they like it before they taste it. If it just is sm slapped on a plate and thrown at you, people have a tendency and they can complain more. Right. Exactly. So, um, so that’s our our thing. Anniey’s Gourmet Catering. I’m proud to say I have a great team. I um most of them are my airline friends or my um you know friends I’ve had forever and um and we we work together very well. Most of us have been in the hospitality industry be it the airlines or um you know or the hotels here or any type of um people serving of um a background. So, um, we’ve been in business a long time and we carry the crown for the best shakurerie in Las Vegas and, um, we won that last year along with the, um, uh, the catering award and the year before that we won the catering award. So, um, we’re proud of our product. Uh, we we love to meet new people and we have several clientele that, uh, that we’ve had for years and years and, um, and we look forward to having new clientele. So, if you want to follow us on Instagram, it’s Annie the Vegas Caterer. And on Facebook, we’re Annie’s Gourmet. And um I’d like to thank my sponsors before we start getting involved in the party or we’re going to end up uh um you know, running out of time. So, I just want to thank um number one, Vegas Real Estate have been my uh my sponsors. Uh they made these beautiful chef coats with me. My mother passed away a few months ago. She taught me everything I know. Um um we have a cookbook coming out and it’s called Memories of Made Around the Dinner Table. It’s in honor of my mom. Her name was Connie Defalco. She was a lovely lady and um and we had a restaurant, a few restaurants together. That’s how I met Matthew. But um she’s always with me. This is from my sponsors and that’s a picture of mom and I. And um I would also like to thank Dress the Drink. So, Matthew is Dress the Drink and um and Cindy McCclure and Donna Floth and um they’ve created this amazing company and they’ve opened their doors. They’ve allowed us in this beautiful building today and we took over their space the entire day and um and we made a big mess. That’s the fun part. We had a lot of fun. Yep. And um and they’re a great company. Um, I’ll let Matthew explain a little bit about his company when uh when we when we get going with the drinks, but um basically they’re an amazing company that do um simple syrups. They do all kinds of beautiful garnishes and um um sugars around the room, salts around there and things like that. So, uh their minds are completely artistic, which is the greatest thing ever. I just love that about them. Um the other u um excuse me the other sponsors that we work very well with are spirits and spice and um they have um um obviously spirits. So they have flavored spirits, they have great olive oils that with all these infused products and um and then the balsamic glazes and then dress the drink and spirits and spice have 45 um uh of these great spices that uh they sell and um they’re online as well. They have a store here at the Venetian. So, check them out. They’re fabulous. Um, I want to thank my family. Um, my husband Rick has been just fabulous through uh my career with with catering. It’s not an easy career. It’s very there’s a lot of work involved and a lot of uh time away from home and um you know, clean up and different things. And uh he’s always been my biggest fan and my biggest supporter. So, I want to thank him. And he was so great with my mom uh through uh you know, through her older years. So, um, Rick is very family oriented as well. And, um, you know, and my my father-in-law, um, Don and, you know, my my deceased mother-in-law, Joyce, were wonderful people. And my, you know, my my brothers and sisters-in-law, they were great as well. Um, my family, I’m the youngest of four children. And, um, and my my brother um is the only boy and then he’s surrounded by girls. The poor guy his whole life, but um, he he wanted to sponsor. He’s a sponsor. So I want to thank him personally. Um he wanted to sponsor me on behalf of um our family and my mother because he was so happy that uh we were um you know we were doing this and we were also doing a cookbook in my mom’s honor. So the cookbook will be out shortly. It’s called Memories Are Made Around the Dinner Table and that’s exactly what happened. That’s how I was so inspired. Um, we had Grape BL Blend Coffee on board this week and um, we had Morton Seasonal and we had um, uh, the Honey Company. Um, and um, I guess I think that’s everybody. Just thank you to everybody. We had so many people that came and tasted and helped out throughout the whole process. Uh, many of my friends, my airline friends, my um, you know, well, my my my best girlfriends and um, uh, it was just a great experience the whole week. We had a lot of fun. So, um, so this is the culmination of, uh, of the week and, um, uh, we really enjoyed it. So, this is episode 12 and once again, it’s martinis and Christinis. So, um, I’m going to, um, I’m going to let Matt explain a little bit about Dress the Drink and um, and we’ll be back in just a moment. Okay. Thank you. [Music] Welcome back to Christinis and martinis. We have five different Christinis that are paired with five delicious martinis. I’m here with my my I call him my nephew. He’s my adopted nephew. I just love him. He came into the restaurant as a as an 11-year-old kid. And um and I just we just love him. My mother loved him. She just adored him. And uh and he’s part of our family. So Matthew is with Dress the Drink. And I’m going to um Alex, we’ll go start off with the lemon one. So I’ll explain what the lemon christini is. And then Matthew has made an amazing pair of you know pairing with the martini. So then he’ll explain the martini and we’ll just go through the table and point them out to you. Um it’s really hard to I can tell you how to make a christini, but it’s just it’s it’s how you want to make it. And you want to use very small pieces and um and different flavors that complement each other. And um I’ve always I’ve fellen in love with lemon roata. Oh my god, it’s to die for. So, um, so this Christini over here on the left, which is right here, there’s a lemon ricotta on a just a plain Christini. And, um, I have a pesto paste on it and a lemon puree covering the top. And then I drizzled it with honey. And then dressed the drink with Matthew. Matthew made a um, a sugarcoated lemon um, garnish. And the lemon is edible. It’s delicious, like eating candy. And that’s what the the circle is on the top of it. And um and Matthew, what’s our what’s our martini? So, it’s a yuzu lemonchello martini. So, we have uh tangerine gin, uh spirits and spice, calamani, balsamic uh juice as the kind of the binder. Um and then our yuzu demoraro syrup uh that we manufacture here at dress the drink. Um and then as a garnish, we just have a half rim of a yuzu honey blend. Uh, and it’s absolutely to die for. It’s citrusy, but super flavor noticeable, uh, as well. And it pairs very well with the It looks delicious. Oh, it looks I can’t wait to try it. I can’t wait to try it. So, underneath me here. Um, we have a an artich choke, but it’s a it’s a Christini once again. And it’s a orange salami with paired with a dollop of cream cheese and a marinated artichoke. And that’s on the Christini. I think that’s this one, right? Yeah. So, this one is olive kind of like a dirty martini in a sense. Um, so with just using two ingredients. So, we’re using vodka here as well as uh dressed to drinks olive juice mix. Um, and then we pair it with our olive blue cheese blend as the rim. So, works fantastic. Get instead of having to do, you know, four or five ingredients for a dirty martini, just two ingredients and you have it nice and quick. Oh, that looks great. And, um, I’m just going to swap with you over here. Okay. So, I can point out down here. So, um, if you if you ever frequented our restaurant, we had an an order that was blackberry walnut brie. And, um, this is blackberry walnut christini. So, it’s a piece of toasted christini. And then I put brie on it. Just a slab of brie. And then we have warm maple syrup and a walnut on top with a fresh blackberry. And then on top of it is sprinkled brown sugar. So, and then for the martini for this one is we did bourbon, which normally not everyone would think of using bourbon in a martini. However, for this it works very well. Uh so we did bourbon, uh some spirits and spice colami balsamic. Um, and then I did a smoked blackberry maple syrup and we also used spirits and spices very berry uh laor and it gives a nice pinkish color to it. And then we paired it with our half purple pineapple chip which gives just a nice floral elegance to it. Absolutely beautiful. I love that. Look at that garnish you guys. My gosh. Okay. So, over here we have um a bara on a christini with a pistachio basil pesto paste. And then I have a teardrop bell pepper. It’s a baby one and it’s marinated. And then I drizzled it in fig balsamic glaze. Yeah. So, for this one, we did a salsa syrup. So, we paired our salsa syrup that we create here uh with uh colami balsamic again by Spirits and Spice as well as um man I want I can’t remember now. Uh cuz all of these are just fantastic. So, um this one was with some rum uh and it’s fantastic. uh gives a nice heat uh to it, but it balances out very well with the bara christini. And I just love your garnish. That’s gorgeous. Is that a Is that a tomato? Yeah. So, it’s a tomato basil chip um that we manufacture quite a bit here. Oh my goodness. That is just gorgeous. Uh if and I I made this is just the um this pairs well with this too. I just made this as an extra one in case someone didn’t like the bara. Um and you’re vegetarian. Uh we have several vegetarians that we know. So this is a cucumber, kiwi, and um just a spinach artich choke on a christini. And I thought that would work well with your drink, too. So I just threw a few of those in for our vegetarians in the group. Um then down over here uh okay so we have um below us right over here this is our um pushuto with a fig chutney and um a garlic blend whipped cream cheese. Yeah. So for this one, we did um our fig nutmeg dearara syrup that we also paired with our gold dusted date wrapped apricot as a garnish. Uh this one plays very well with uh just all the flavors that are in that christini. And I mean just absolutely dectable. Um and that one is also over based. So it’s a spice rum. Um can be spice rum, it can be white rum, uh whichever. Um, but basically it’s endless. It’s fabulous. And um, I love your garnish on it. That’s just beautiful. It’s just fabulous. Um, I believe did we hit them all? I think we did. Yes, we did. We’ll be back in just a moment. So, in the front on the front board, you can’t have an Italian ensemble without having bruschetta board. So, uh, there are two different types of bruschetta. The regular is um just a tomato. It’s chopped Roma tomatoes and your um your um uh basil and then your red onion. And it’s in an olive oil um combination. And then you just place it on your toast. And then to the to the right of that I have um uh it’s got blue cheese crumbles and it’s a cornbased um bruschetta and brush it’s not bruschetta, it’s bruseta if you’re in Italy. So they’ll correct you. They will. And um so that we have two different kinds. A lot of times I like we have a chicken mango bruschetta that’s really colorful and pretty. It’s all um yellow. So I I like to throw that in um sometime in some type of an ensemble just because of the colors. It really sets it off nicely. And um we’ve uh we we always have bread. Um I have several clients that will say, “Annie, we don’t eat a lot of bread, you know.” Um but bread is part of an Italian presentation. So it doesn’t matter if you eat all the bread. It’s not about that. It’s about the look and it’s about the feel of the Italian breads and all the different kinds. So, um here we have our artisan. There’s a garlic um roasted garlic bread. We have a rosemary and then we have a three cheese salmonola bread. And I always like to pair it with everybody loves the fig spread. Um figs are very trendy. Um you know, and they’re healthy for you. So, uh we have a fig spread with it today. And I I ran out of room, but I do have this I just wanted to wanted to point out. And this is um an Annie pasta board. Um nothing too fancy. It’s just roasted red peppers and chingi, which is um the smaller fresh mozzarella balls. And then we have a variety of Sicilian olives. And it’s over arugula, which always is a nice salad um that compliments any of these dishes here. And um these are light things. Um artichoke carts always go well. Everybody loves artichokes and they’re healthy, too. Um, the Mediterranean diet is pretty healthy. Um, right. Yes, it is. So, we have eggplant and um, you know, you have all your vegetables, you have fresh bell peppers, you have onions, you have garlic, which is very healthy. And, um, olives are healthy. Even though they’re a little salty, they are healthy. Yep. So, there’s all different kinds of um, things that are good for you. Um, my parents lived well into their 80s, very healthy um, you know, for the most part. So we always we had to eat everything on our plate. Grandma would say join the clean plate club and we had to eat everything. And I I never really appreciated it. In fact, I used to hate it and try and give it to my dog pal under the table. But in my older years now I do appreciate why we need to eat different things and and lots of it. Um you want to stay healthy and uh you want to keep a good weight and a good um you know good mental health as long as you can. So food is medicine as much as food is for health and for social socialization. Food and beverage are um are very key and very important to all of us everybody as humans. And um and we are we’re very blessed that I’m very blessed to be with Matthew today. I thank you so much. Thank you. It’s been wonderful having working with you and having um us being here. We really appreciated it. We had several um uh different homes that we went to this week on our um on our episodes and um we enjoyed all of them. We had um had some great outings and we appreciate everybody that opened up their homes and their hearts to all of us and um and cheered us on and uh you know um uh we had great uh film crew here. So I would like to thank Christina and Sergio once again. They did a wonderful job and they’re so patient and kind and um they made us feel less nervous. Yes. Um so uh you know the nerves were going but um and uh I want to thank Susie Saka for being my manager this week and keeping everybody in check and making sure that u you know every all the details she’s very detail oriented and uh she was with me from sun up to sun down for many many days. So um so thank you Susie. I appreciate all that. And my best friend Deborah over there, thank you for everything. She’s been with me since day one with the catering. And um I have a a part in our book that explains when we started Annie’s Gourmet. I had a phone call from a gentleman. He wanted to have a Thanksgiving dinner. And Deborah’s laughing. So I says, “Oh my goodness, who am I going to get to help?” So I said, “Deborah, I I have this phone call to work on Thanksgiving.” and her Nicholas and Marissa were little kids at the time and her husband Ray was such a good sport. He said, “Deb, go help Annie. We’re fine.” On Thanksgiving Day, so Deborah and I are carving up turkey for for this family and uh and all of a sudden we hear Elvis. remember Elvis was in the house and he was on the piano and he was the worst Elvis we’ve ever heard and and we heard this screeching and everything and um the only one that would have put up with that with me was Deborah and um and we’ll always have that laugh. We’re like every every Thanksgiving you remember Elvis and how far we’ve come since Elvis. But um but that was a fun experience and that was at the very beginning. And then I have Lola over there. Lola has been with me. Lola and I were flight attendants together way way back. And um Lana, her real name is Lana, but she’s a show girl, so I call her Lola. And she’s retired now, but um she was a show girl when we were flight attendants. She did both. And she danced on the strip and she was fabulous. And in her her later years and my mother’s later years, Lana took very good care of my mom. She was one of her caretakers. So, thank you. And then Miss Cindy back there. So, I’m just going through the whole room. I might as well. Right. So, Miss Cindy is the the the brains of Dress the Drink. She’s amazing. And um I remember her talking about this right when we opened our restaurant and I I was um newly newly met her and she said, “I have this idea and um you know, I’m getting knocked down and all that.” And I said, “Keep it going.” And I just I just knew because she’s such an amazing mind and talent and a driven lady and she had this this son who was 11 years old and he’s the the best golfer you’ll ever see. He’s just an avid golfer and he was so talented and she wanted to put him through college and she wanted to have this this dream and she’s gone from nothing to this big building. If you saw her where we are and what she’s accomplished with with um Matthew and Donna and her whole team, you would just be amazed. She’s just just an amazing person. So, I’m honored to be here and I’m grateful. Thank you so much. And um uh in in conclusion, we thank you everybody for watching our series. I hope you enjoyed it. Um I hope you you uh look out for our book and when it’s available um we’ll be on Instagram and we’ll let you know. And we have all these recipes in there. Um I thank you so much for all the combinations of um drinks over the past few days. It’s just been wonderful. It it’s a great um great friendship and partnership here. And um I want to thank my family again and um Adam Adam Frasier my my friend for many many years and um and my photographer does a great job. So thank you so much for for coming and also um my brother from another mother Chrisino who um he’s he is he’s a a kid that was raised in an Italian restaurant and um he had a 50-year family restaurant. He’s not in the restaurant industry at all now, but he will pop in. When I first opened my restaurant, it was like my first two days. I was like, “Oh my god, you know, it’s so busy. I need some help.” And um and I called him and 10 minutes later, he had an apron on. He was in my kitchen and I What can I pound chicken? So, he was back there pounding all my chicken and I have a picture of it and he’s cracking up laughing at me, making fun of me. Yo, you’re fine. Stop it. Stop it. So, he’s always been my right hand whenever whenever I needed it. And I really appreciate you, Chris. You’re my brother from another mother for sure. And um and I I love you. So, um so thank you. Um I think I I I pretty much say this. There anything else you need to say? You want to I think you did fantastic. Thank you. Thank you. I um this was a lot of fun. It was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun. And um and I like concluding with this because this is this to me is my um my happiness. I enjoy doing this and I really enjoy doing it with you, Matt. Same here. This was a lot of fun. So um so anyways, that’ll be um that’ll be it. We um we want you to know that memories are made around the dinner table and um never never forget that. Please spend time with your parents and your families. Put your phones away for dinner. Enjoy conversation. talk about what you did for the day, what your plans are, what your goals are. Um, you can’t get time back. I will tell you that you can’t get time back. So, spend that time with your loved ones. You’ll never regret it. And, um, and just make those memories and and have fun cooking. Thank you. [Music]