After mastering her craft in Paris and New York, chocolatier Ashleigh Pearson opens Petite Soeur in time for Valentine’s Day

Inside her gleaming Georgetown shop, Ashleigh Pearson (right) arranges handmade bonbons in glass cases like fine jewelry. Petite Soeur’s debut marked a milestone in a 12-year career that started less than a mile away at chef Robert Wiedmaier’s acclaimed Marcel’s.

“I knocked on the door and said I wanted a job,” Pearson recalls. “I loved to bake but had never done it professionally. They laughed at me—but gave me a chance.” After working her way up to become the restaurant’s head pastry chef, the DC-area native eventually won a scholarship from the local Les Dames d’Escoffier chapter to study pastry at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris.

Two years later, Pearson was named head chocolatier at Thomas Keller’s Per Se in New York—and narrowed her focus. “When I realized I could hand-paint and create all these complex flavors in one bite,” she reflects, “I was hooked on chocolate.”

In 2019, she returned to Washington to forge her own path.
“I knew that it was time for me to start creating under my name,” she says. Pearson hopes to give customers “a Michelin-level chocolate experience,” with each flavor telling a personal story. Maple Black Walnut Crunch bonbons, for example, were inspired by her grandfather’s black-walnut cake, while Almond Butter and Jelly is a grownup take on the proprietor’s beloved childhood PB&Js. Petite Soeur also sells homemade butter sablé cookies, chocolate bars and wrapped confections. 1332 Wisconsin Avenue, NW; petite-soeur.com