Sometimes fast food restaurants come up with menu ideas that really make your brain hurt. Amazingly, they could be doing a lot worse. For every KFC Famous Bowl, P'Zone, Volcano Taco and Nacho Crunch Burrito, there are hundreds upon hundreds of far more terrible ideas, as yet unrealized. In honor of that, we've come up with our Top 10 Worst Potential McFood Ideas. Thankfully these are not in existence. But if you start seeing a commercial for any of the foods on our list, look out your window, because the world is probably ending.

10. McCalamari

Scoff all you want, but there's already a filet-o-fish, so who's to say they can't bread and fry calamari? In fact, we're pretty sure you can get away with serving anything at a fast food restaurant as long as you bread and fry it. Since we can't picture McDonald's figuring out how to make a decent marinara sauce, we imagine these rubbery rings would come with a side of honey dijon.

9. McDim Sum

Does McDonald's have steaming capabilities? We're not sure, but we can certainly picture enormous boxes of frozen dim sum packed with ground beef or shrimp. Or maybe they'd just take the meat that would have been used for chicken nuggets, put a dim sum wrapper around it, then ship them around the country. These would likely be served with their signature sweet and sour sauce.

8. McBirria

If Subway can come out with a beef barbacoa sandwich, who's to say McDonald's can't try their hand at McBirria? This Jalisco-born lamb stew is, to be perfectly honest, bad at most Mexican restaurants in Los Angeles. Out of a Mickey D's kitchen?

If this isn't pizza, than lord knows what McDonald's pizza is.; Credit: My Last Bite

If this isn't pizza, than lord knows what McDonald's pizza is.; Credit: My Last Bite

7. McPizza

This doesn't seem like it should be this high on the list, until you realize that they already tried it on their dinner menu about 20 years ago. Truthfully, we can't really figure out why this failed but the premium bacon ranch salad with grilled chicken is still going strong. Though we do know that if Chowhound can't even agree on whether or not Mozza makes pizza, they certainly aren't going to like this.

6. Spaghetti McCarbonara

Let's just start by assuming the pasta will be overcooked. We don't picture them sourcing particularly good pancetta, and the thought of a raw egg is fairly frightening. In fact, we assume it would just be spaghetti in a bacon cream sauce topped with cheddar cheese and a fried egg.

5. Lobster McThermidor

Lobster Thermidor was created in Paris over a century ago. Not so this. Suffice it to say that even in the best hands, combining seafood and cheese is problematic. Lobster and processed cheese, say, through a drive-thru window? No.

4. McBeef Tartare

They do have a lot of beef purveyors, but will any of them have something with enough quality to be served raw? Does it sound better to you if they throw a raw quail egg into the mix? In our estimation, this dish would come with a lot of Worcestershire sauce. Or, more realistically, BBQ sauce.

McPâté would look slightly different.; Credit: N. Galuten

McPâté would look slightly different.; Credit: N. Galuten

3. McPâté

We decided to avoid the obvious McFoie Gras in lieu of this quite possibly more appalling McForcemeat. All those chunks of liver and other assorted bits that didn't make it into your Quarter Pounder? You know that's finding it's way into the McPâté, served with some sliced bread-and-butter pickles, rather than cornichons.

This is not what you would receive at Mickey D's; Credit: N. Galuten

This is not what you would receive at Mickey D's; Credit: N. Galuten

2. McBouillabaisse

Nothing says “I'm loving it” like Provençal fish stew. We're almost as frightened of their McRouille as we are of all that McSeafood. But in all likelihood, expect that it would consist entirely of imitation crab meat and the un-fried contents of that aforementioned filet-o-fish, served with a toasted sesame seed bun. We don't even want to imagine what the to-go box looks like.

1. McSushi

This, indisputably, is the clear number one on the list. “Sushi-grade” fish is seemingly everywhere these days, with Duane Reade now serving their own version. But McDonald's? Please, please no. Picturing that watery hunk of poorly defrosted neon-pink tuna resting atop a gummy wad of dry, rice-like substance makes us want stab ourselves in the eyes with a steel barbecue fork.

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