The weather is crisp this time of year in Big Bear Lake, Southern California’s vibrant lakeside mountain town. The snow usually piles up later on, barring some early-season storm, but in mid-December, the air is already thin and sharp, with an icy edge to the winter wind.

You’d never know it inside Tropicali, the hilltop hangout right in the center of town. With its Tiki-ish island decor, leopard print accents and many sunset-toned touches, the restaurant feels a flight away from the icebox that Big Bear can occasionally become. Of course, the menu helps, too. Tropicali is one of California’s great purveyors of poke bowls, the Hawaiian fresh fish staple that surged in popularity a decade ago on the mainland. 

Tropicali has previously been given the title of highest-ranked poke restaurant in the entire United States by Yelp — and was even the highest-ranked restaurant, regardless of cuisine or price point, in all of California in 2019. Owner Michael Sterling Eaton doesn’t mind the surprise that washes over customers’ faces when they first set foot inside Tropicali. He’s used to getting the same few questions: Is America’s best poke really in Big Bear? How did you even think to build a place like this? And what’s with the absolutely massive shark mouth?

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The giant shark mouth entrance to Tropicali in Big Bear Lake, Calif.

“I felt this sense of more,” Eaton says, by way of an introduction into the unlikely story of Tropicali. In a wide-ranging phone call with SFGATE, he spoke at length about his time as a creative director, photographer and hospitality partner, including his work with San Diego’s Lafayette Hotel, which was named 2024’s Hotel of the Year by Esquire. Originally from Del Mar, Eaton moved to Big Bear more than a decade ago with his wife and two young children, using the mountain getaway as an escape from work that otherwise took him around the globe.

Running his creative agency Neo Nostalgia and making surf films for Billabong (among other companies) was eye-opening, he assures me, but at a certain point, it stopped fulfilling him. “I was shooting billboards,” Eaton says. “Tom Ford, Dolce & Gabbana, stuff like that. But it was flat. There was no experience.” 

Eaton’s occupational journey soon became a spiritual one, and he says he felt called to work in something public-facing, with an element of community and service. “I saw this little shack,” he says of his first restaurant foray, a tiny drive-thru selling coffee and small Hawaii-style bowls and bites. “It was easy, it was cheap, and it was a way for me to just start loving people and saying hi to the community while serving them fun, artistic food that I knew about from my travels.”

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Funky design elements, including stone, feathers and tiki, at the pickup food counter inside Tropicali in Big Bear.

Funky artwork and touches of Tiki........

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