SF man goes viral for ‘slammin’ Dollaritas’ at Applebees during quake

When you go to Applebee’s, you often get more than you expect. Ask Steve Mazzari, better known to some as “Dollarita Steve.”

The 28-year-old software engineer was spending his Friday evening with friends at the Applebee’s on Fisherman’s Wharf. They were drinking Dollaritas, the chain’s $1 margaritas, when they felt the shake of a 3.7 magnitude earthquake hitting the Bay Area. For a moment, the restaurant went quiet.

But the quake passed, the Applebee’s hum of activity returned and Mazzari and his friends resumed their drinking. He was still riding the buzz when a KTVU-TV camera person flagged him down as he walked out of the restaurant about an hour later around 7:30 p.m.

“My brain just lit up like a Christmas tree,” Mazzari told SFGATE. “I was like, ‘Hell yeah, let’s do an interview.’”

After mentioning that he had just finished “slammin’ Dollaritas,” Mazzari briefly described the earthquake to the interviewer. He then threw up a peace sign, shouted, “The Dollarita is back!” and walked home to Lower Pacific Heights.

He was winding down in bed later that night when he saw his picture making the rounds on social media. Mazzari’s interview had gone viral. 

“I did not think it was going to go that crazy,” Mazzari said of the interview. “No, not at all.”

The rest of the night was “a blur,” he said. He stayed up until 2 a.m. scrolling through social media posts.

“New guy just dropped,” one social media user replied to KTVU’s original post on X, formerly known as Twitter, which had 3.4 million views at the time of publication.

“Thought this was The Onion at first,” another wrote.

Reactions from friends and family poured in over the weekend. Mazzari said he got texts from “every person I ever met.” On Monday morning, he woke up to Slack DMs from co-workers. 

“My parents were contacting me and they were like, ‘What have you done? ’” he laughed.

On Monday morning, Mazzari got a taste of the celebrity life when he noticed a coffee shop employee giving him an unusual look. 

“He was like, ‘How was your weekend? ’ And I was like, ‘You know exactly how my weekend was, don’t you? ’” Mazzari recalls. “He’s like, ‘Yeah … yeah.’” 

The attention has affected Mazzari’s dating life in a “very positive” way, he said, adding, “Let’s just say, this week I’m a very busy man.”

He’s received countless DMs, although he admits that some were too lewd for his liking. 

“This girl I went on a date with like two and a half years ago messaged me and said, ‘My friend wants to go on a date with you. She thinks you’re her soulmate,’” he said. 

For the most part, Mazzari has been reveling in his newfound fame. He loves the attention, he said, and he’s happy to be able to give people some innocent fun. On Halloween, he plans to dress up as himself, wearing the same outfit he wore for the KTVU interview.

Mazzari stressed that he was not an Applebee’s regular — his go-to happy hour bar is Harry’s Bar on Fillmore Street — and that his decision to go to the restaurant was “entirely ironic,” he said. After watching a month’s worth of the chain’s “Dollarita’s Back” ads in football games, he and his friends thought it would be funny to see what the hype was about.

“Guys, enough is enough,” he recalls telling his friends. “We’ve got to go and we’ve got to try this thing.”

Mazzari said that he’s reached out to Applebee’s to try to nail a promotional package, but without any luck. “I will take my business to Chili’s if it comes to that,” he told SFGATE.

When asked whether he had anything he wanted to share with San Franciscans, he told SFGATE that “I really am like that all the time.”

“You ever see me, you ever want to drink a margarita? I’m always down and around,” Mazzari said. “So keep the vibes going.”