Chocolatier Ashleigh Pearson is intent on making fine confections, a luxury usually found in fine dining restaurants, available at the drop of a hand. From D.C. to France to Atlanta, Pearson has spent 15 years satiating sweet tooths and honing her craft as a pastry chef and now one of the few Black women chocolatiers in the country. Now, she’s doing things her way with Avec Noelle, creating handcrafted bonbons that blend nostalgia, community, quality, and convenience.
The Atlanta Voice: What inspired you to get into the world of chocolates?
Ashleigh Pearson: “I actually never thought I would be a chocolatier. I started off wanting to be a pastry chef. I literally was a biology student, and I knocked on the back door of a French restaurant in Georgetown, and I was just like, ‘I want to work here for the summer. I want to help out. I want to get involved.’ They were like, ‘You don’t have the credentials to be here, but if you want to help out and hang around, just stay out of our way.’ I worked there and did everything that they said. They eventually ended up giving me a job, and I trained there long enough to gain some skills. Years and years and years later, I became the pastry chef there, and then eventually it led me to traveling to Paris. I went to Le Cordon Bleu, and I studied pastry.”
Photo by Tabius McCoy/the Atlanta Voice
AV: From biology to pastries is an interesting leap.
AP: “My family are academics. Everyone loves science, so I always thought I would do research or something like that. After Paris, I graduated first in my class, and it led me to New York City. I had the opportunity to work for Chef Thomas Keller at three-Michelin-starred Per Se, and they brought me on to work on entremets, which are really detailed layer cakes. That science mind of mine just loved that layering, that precision, that beauty. And then one day he told me, ‘You’re going to become our chocolatier,’ and you don’t really tell Thomas Keller no. But I was like, wait, I love this thing, and I think I’m good at it. But I did it, and I realized that was my medium. I found a thing that I knew I was going to do for the rest of my life.
“Because while I love plated desserts and pastries, it was so fascinating to me how I could recreate some of the flavors and things that I had as a child in a one-bite, little confection. That candy could be fresh. I grew up in D.C., where you go to the corner store, you get a penny candy, you get something that’s been in your grandmother’s purse for ages, and that was candy to me. Applying some of the techniques that I had learned as a pastry chef, and then obviously this three-star Michelin environment, and applying it to candies, chocolates, and confections fascinated me.”
AV: What did those experiences teach you in the transition to opening your own business?
AP: “I realized that I was going to open my own business when I would go home and talk to my family about all the things that I was making at work, and they were like, that sounds incredible. And I was like, my own family has never experienced the things that I’m serving people every single night. I realized, if you don’t have the reservation at the end of that fine dining or Michelin-level meal, you don’t get the chocolate service. You don’t actually get to those little plates of confections and mingardies. And I was like, that doesn’t make sense. Everybody should have access to walk into a shop, and if you choose to spend $4 on a piece of chocolate, you have access to getting something that is unique and beautiful, and fresh, and you don’t have to have a reservation for it. So, that was critical to me; I want to do this, but I don’t want to just do this for these people.”
AV: Now you have an Avec Noelle, which is named after your daughter. I read that you had another business before this one, but closed it down because you didn’t believe you could handle both motherhood and entrepreneurship. What changed that mindset for you?
AP: “Prior to being a mom, I thought I could never do this. I was putting so many limitations on what I thought I could do, even though I’d already done so many hard things. And if I’m just being honest, being a mom gives you another level of superpower that you start to tap into, and I realized, I can do this. And most importantly, as I raised her, I didn’t want her to think that I didn’t finish my life’s work because of her. Or that, for some reason, because she was here, I wasn’t going to do the thing that I have so many sound bites of me saying was my life’s work, or the thing that I would do forever. I wanted to show her that as a woman, there’s never necessarily like a convenient time to start a family or to have a child, but we do those things, and we do them gracefully. When there’s time for us to ebb and flow and go back to our work — if we want to — we can. I also really have to thank my mom, because she encouraged me not to stop. She said, ‘You’ve put way too much into this. You have to keep going.’”
AV: Well said. Going into the science of it all, what goes into making handcrafted perfections?
AP: “A lot goes into it, and everyone does it at different levels. There’s so many spectrums of candy and candy making, and for me, I’m always pushing myself to have some innovation, but to make sure I keep a level of familiarity. So, we’re always technique-driven. With Avec Noelle, the first and foremost thing is a beautifully tempered bowl of chocolate. We use Valrhona chocolate exclusively from France. You start with a product, and you have to break the product down by melting it. You build it back up by tempering it, and then your medium is ready to use. It really becomes a balance of beautifully tempering the bowl of chocolate, beautifully polishing the molds, and then we add this extra component of hand painting all the bonbons. So, there’s so many steps where things could go wrong, and technique just builds and builds and builds. And at every step, while you’re working as fast as you can, you’re constantly checking yourself. From tempering to making fillings that are properly blended and emulsified, to beautiful designs and that color theory, all of that plays into making one beautiful bonbon.”
AV: And now you’re doing pop-ups all around the Atlanta area. What has it been like for you to see that mission that you had of making this luxury accessible for people?
AP: “It’s incredible, and it’s so fun when people say, can I just eat that? People go from wondering, what is this? To eat it and have that nostalgic moment. The most important thing about this brand is to pull the pretension out of chocolate and fine foods and fine confections. This is for everybody. Pop it in your mouth. Does this feel familiar, like something you’ve had as a kid? One of the bonbons that I make is modeled after a cake that my dad used to make. It’s all those nostalgic things that you’ll find from this brand. We don’t particularly focus on any crazy flavor combinations. We try to perfect the classics.”
AV: Can you talk about your new pop-up at Grant Park market?
AP: “I’m so excited. Grant Park market has let us do a long-term pop-up. Every Friday and Saturday, from 4-7 p.m. from this weekend until Mother’s Day, we’ll be at Grant Park market bringing in new products, growing the brand, growing some visibility. We’ll also, in that time, be launching nationwide shipping. So, as people learn about our brand, they can also send it to their loved ones and give them something that’s local, something from an Atlanta chocolatier.”
AV: What do you hope for the future of Avec Noelle?
AP: “For the future of Avec Noelle, I really hope to become a mainstay in Atlanta. For this business, I want to see it grow into the community. I want to see it meet the needs of the people around it. I want to see it evolve and grow with local goods and doing collaborations with local people. And then building that name and sending it out, you know, not just saying, focus on here, you know, building something that’s based in Atlanta, and then saying, you know, Atlanta has one of the best chocolate tiers in the country. It’s actually in Atlanta. You know, I think that would be amazing. I love.”
AV: There aren’t a lot of Black women chocolatiers. How did you navigate setting your own table and making your own seat at the table?
AP: “I’m grateful that my parents always raised me to have a mentality to push. Doesn’t matter what you want to do. My dad said to me, ‘You can be a garbage person. You better be the best garbage person.’ If you’re gonna do it, just be the best at it. And so early on, as most young people are, you’re insecure. You don’t see people who look like you. I’ve been all over doing this craft. There’s some discrimination. There’s people who will challenge you. And something that I always focused on was just quietly showing up. I don’t need to be the loudest person in the room. People kind of tease me that I’m quiet, but my work will always speak for me.
“I remember I had a chef instructor in culinary school, and for some reason, he always made me go into the basement, three flights of stairs, and get the ingredients for the whole class. And I’m a paying student, and there are people hired by the school to do this. And he said to me, go get butter, go get eggs, and we’re being timed to make a confection before the time is over. And I did it. I used to run track in high school. I sprinted down those steps, ran back up, carried all that butter, finished before the rest of the class, and felt I did a beautiful job, as did he. And he was a Meilleur Ouvrier de France, one of the highest-ranking chefs in France. And over time, he realized, you can’t shake me, you can’t break me, so you’ve just got to just love me.
“Early in my career, it was about proving myself. At this point in my career, I have the confidence now. My work speaks for me. I don’t feel the need anymore to prove myself. I’m confident doing something simple, doing it well, and saying, ‘This is just a butter caramel, but I think it’s one of the best caramels you’ll experience. I just feel compelled to show up and be good at what I do, and that’s gotten me into all the rooms that I’ve needed to be in thus far.”