Malpractice Is Portland’s Coolest New Cocktail Bar

At a narrow, 20-seat cocktail bar just off the train tracks in Portland’s Central Eastside Industrial District, a drink asks a question: If it’s called a dirty martini and tastes like a dirty martini, is it a dirty martini? What if it has neither gin nor vodka, but Mexican rum? What if the vermouth is sherry vermouth, and the olive brine is replaced with a mix of lactic acid and saline the drink’s inventor, former barista Rick Munro, calls “pseudo seawater-brine”? Is it still a dirty martini? Maybe the answer is that it doesn’t matter—if it’s this bewilderingly delicious.

In the drink, officially titled This Is Our Dirty Martini, roasted bay leaf oil glistens on an otherwise pristine surface. The scent of pineapple and peach blossom wafts from the glass with an oceanic breeze, obscuring the brackish punch the cocktail will deliver on first sip. “Bracing” is the word most readily conjured, followed by funky, silky, vegetal. While I contemplate the concoction and the questions it raises, a Union Pacific freight train tears by, its horn momentarily drowning out the chatter of guests and the new wave on the speakers. This is Malpractice, Munro’s chapel of brazen cocktail ostentation, and it might be the weirdest, coolest bar Portland has seen in years.

Munro isn’t asking questions about the Platonic concept of a dirty martini for any serious reason. Rather, he’s playing with the inherent absurdity of overly complicated mixed drinks as a subject—a cheeky meditation on measured excess. He makes his own green Chartreuse (Rick’s Obtuse Chartreuse), ferments honey for syrups, uses powdered acids to alter the flavor profiles of juices, infuses Japanese whisky with shiitake mushrooms, fat-washes drinks with goat cheese. But it’s all sincere and fastidious, never parody nor gratuitous.

That sly precision is perhaps most apparent in Birds Aren’t Real!, a crowd favorite. It’s a twist on a Jungle Bird, a drink made with rum, bittersweet Campari, lime juice, and pineapple juice. Munro’s version includes acid-adjusted citrus: sometimes blood orange, occasionally kumquat, or whatever else is best in season. Then it gets milk-clarified, which smooths the edges of the normally acerbic drink. All the familiar elements are here, but they meld even more elegantly. Rather than a collins or rocks glass, it’s served in a glass bird, the tail hole stuffed with a pineapple frond, a metal straw, and a “massive spanking” of mint. “I take myself very, very seriously,” he says. “But that kind of thing is tongue-in-cheek funny to me. It’s not a clown coming out and blasting a fucking gun, it’s just this tiny chuckle.”

Birds Aren’t Real! was the first drink Munro created for Malpractice, before the bar was even a concept. Munro had never worked as a bartender; he began his hospitality career in coffee. Originally from California, he ended up living and working in Portland, including a stint at Jacqueline’s pandemic pivot café (now restaurant) Fair Weather. It was there that he created the Jungle Bird variation for a coworker’s pop-up, and fell for the creative freedom of bartending. “When it comes to coffee or wine, you’re curating. But with a cocktail, it’s modular,” he says. “Like, how can I fuck with this and make it my own?”

In April 2022, Munro decided to start his own pop-up as a way to explore his passion for cocktailing. Malpractice would land at restaurants and bars around town with drinks like clarified basil gimlets and a Blood and Sand made with lacto-fermented, acid-adjusted blood orange juice. As a part of the 30-installment series, he began developing a set of Negroni variations he labeled “Maladjusted,” a not-so-subtle poke at the modern obsession with swapping parts of the Italian classic. When Munro opened Malpractice as a brick-and-mortar bar in December 2024, he brought a few drinks from the original pop-ups, including the Maladjusteds, which come and go periodically. Some closely resemble the standard Negroni, like the #1, which uses gin and sweet vermouth but swaps Campari for the California-made Bruto Americano. Others, like the celery- and dill-packed #6, with its aquavit, rhubarb, and Calvados, do not. “There really is no need to adjust the Negroni, it’s already perfect as is,” he says. “So everything you’re doing beyond that is just some sort of bastard child.” And yet Munro dotes on each of his brood, constantly tweaking and releasing new numbered variations throughout the seasons.

Munro is the primary figure you’ll see behind the four-stool bar. His girlfriend, Diana Dominguez, also helps with service. In the kitchen, former D.O.C. chef Stephen Malloy and his team construct drinking snacks like whipped cheese with potato chips, ‘nduja and Manchego toast, and a stunning hamachi crudo. But Munro conceptualizes and builds the drinks, which involves hours and hours of prebatching and bottling so he can efficiently execute orders. There’s always something tropical served in a ceramic banana (“I love tropical stuff, and I love bitters, and I love them being together,” he says), and Birds Aren’t Real! sometimes makes room for other bird drinks, like Birds Having Sex on the Beach, a drink with obvious origins. Some inspiration comes from stranger places—like the mezcal-based Under the Volcano, an aloe vera liqueur number garnished with a torched shishito pepper. “I wanted a drink that reminded me of a sunburn,” he explains. As far as cocktail work goes, that definitely seems like malpractice.