Img 3835 Food, Montgomery, Perennial, Sustainable — Perennial in Montgomery (Deanne Allegro)

A new sustainable restaurant is now open in Montgomery. It’s called Perennial, highlighting the restaurant’s commitment to sourcing local ingredients for their mouthwatering dishes.

We sat down with owner Deanne Allegro to talk about the process of opening a restaurant and her space in Montgomery.

“The ingredients themselves write the menus”

Perennial Edited Aug 2024 2834 Food, Montgomery, Perennial, Sustainable — Always fresh + in season. (Deanne Allegro)

As a military child, Deanne Allegro was raised all over. But after living in Montgomery four separate times, she considers it home. That’s why she opened her restaurant, Perennial, in the Forest Park neighborhood.

Deanne’s career has always revolved around food—but not exactly like this. She’s a Registered Dietician with two degrees in food science and human nutrition.

The idea to open a restaurant came to her after she sold some property in Pennsylvania. She had some extra cash after the sale and wanted to do something meaningful with it.

“This gave me the freedom to dream, so I found a property, hired an assistant, and spent the next 3.5 years researching, interviewing, designing and slowly building what we now see as Perennial.”
Deanne Allegro, owner of Perennial

Perennial Edited Aug 2024 2749 Food, Montgomery, Perennial, Sustainable — Chatting with guests at Perennial. (Deanne Allegro)

And those three years culminated in the space we see today—an adorable restaurant focused on feeding folks and doing so sustainably.

Deanne and her team work with local farmers to curate a rotating menu based on what’s in season, rather than a static menu that relies on less environmentally conscientious greenhouse farming techniques.

“Some weeks we have had a real limited number of ingredients available and we have a team effort in bouncing ideas off each other to make the menus work. The team here comes from a variety of food backgrounds and experiences and I think that lends to a unique creative approach.”
Deanne Allegro, owner of Perennial

Thumbnail Img 0273 Food, Montgomery, Perennial, Sustainable — It’s like autumn in a bowl. (Deanne Allegro)

In addition to sustainably farmed ingredients, Deanne’s team works to eliminate waste at every step of the process; whether that means saving vegetable scraps to make broth or shopping secondhand for store decorations.

“It also lends to our whole feel—the furniture, decor, tableware, the tiles, sinks, and even the Perennial t-shirts we sell are all previously loved items that we repurposed and rehomed into our space.”
Deanne Allegro, owner of Perennial

But most importantly, the food is incredible. A new menu is published weekly, with seasonal ingredients filling out the roster in dishes like pan-fried Alabama trout or Navy beans with Asian greens.

A glance over the menu shows annotations that tell you the exact farm that supplied ingredients for your dinner; like muscadine ice cream made with fruit from SweetCreek Farm Market and milk from Working Cows Dairy.