IHOP Mystery Ingredient?

Sunday morning I happened to be at an IHOP in Gurnee with 7 kids and 2 other adults. Just the beginning of a tough day.
I'm not real familiar with IHOP, but in general I often do OK with the skillet concept when unsure about how other items may be executed.
I ordered their "classic" skillet which was described as chunks of "red-skin" potatoes, sauteed onion and gr. pepper, maybe something else, melted cheese and eggs. (I tried to confirm the description by going to their website just now, but, oddly---suspiciously even, if you're of a conspiratorial frame of mind---the "skillets" are not to be found anywhere on the menu tab on the site.)
Anyway, the skillet arrived, looking more or less like the description would lead you to expect. But as I dug in with my fork, I noticed an aroma that seemed oddly asian. Not exactly soy sauce or hoisin, but just a generic stir-fry sort of aroma that tripped all those particular sensors in that part of my sense memory. But none of the visuals corresponded. Odd, I thought, and carried on.
Then, as my fork descended through the strata of ingredients I came to a layer of...something, just on top of the potato chunk foundation, and below the rest that looked for all the world like rice vermicelli. It was impossible to really inspect the substance, as it was glued together by melted "cheese," but it wasn't potato chunks, it wasn't sauteed veg., nor was it egg. It was very thin and wavy and starchy. And it corresponded to nothing I could think of in the menu copy.
Anyone more familiar with IHOP and have any idea what this might have been?
It didn't ruin the dish or anything. (The kitchen more or less accomplished that by scrambling the eggs hard and dry and then bringing the whole plate out at room temp.) But I was flummoxed and curious about this aspect of the dish.