Where to begin? Pancit refers to one of what seems like thousands of different noodle dishes. Some noodles are skinny. Some noodles are fat. They all taste like crap.
Go to any Filipino party, and you will likely see at least three iterations of this dish sitting right next to one another. I can all but promise you the noodles will be dry and there will be random pieces of overcooked Grade F- beef, imitation crab, and hard boiled egg littering the mess. Even Filipinos who supposedly love this dish usually squeeze lemon on it - either to kill off the bacteria (aka: noodle cooties) they know have accumulated or to give the dish some sort of flavor (albeit the flavor of a NYC taxicab air-freshener).
If you have to eat this stuff I recommend dousing it in some sort of gravy/sauce from a nearby dish - or making sure you have access to a large beverage (preferably an alcoholic/antiseptic one) to help you get this stuff to move down your esophagus.
Like lumpia, pancit is a great source of pride in many Filipino households. All claim that they make it better than anyone else and they will hound you until you have at least three helping of it. Some will even make outlandish claims about its medicinal qualities - which if you are comparing it to Ipecac syrup or stool softener - well then I guess I can't argue.
