Originally Posted by
tide
One big difference: pad thai is made from rice flour and yakisoba is made from wheat flour. The taste/texture between the two is entirely different. Pad Thai is more akin to the southern chinese rice stick noodles (米粉 or mǐfěn) or Vietnamese pho noodles.
The point I was making was that they are both familiar dishes, extremely popular in their country of origin, that are acceptable to Western palates.
(Mentioning a dish made with Harusame noodles would have been too obscure)