All I wanted was a plugin to skip the search page entirely and go straight to the page. In order to do that, I have to search for "#food" with quotes. Typing in just food without quotes does not accomplish that. The problem at hand here is that this is a clunky workaround to get the plugin to do something adjacent to its actual intended purpose. What shocks me is how in Dokuwiki's 16 year history, it doesn't seem other people have been talking about this, despite it being (I had assumed) box-standard for other wiki platforms. Wikipedia got it right - I figured the others would follow suit. I guess fandom wikia hasn't implemented it either.
But, I've filled in a request at the bounty board. Thanks for the directions.