I am trying “/solutions/food/#tab3″ as a custom menu link.

But the link will not have #tab3 visible when you navigate to the page. The first tab in the stack is always the visible one.

Ideally: “/solutions/food/#tab3″ will open the “food” page with Tab3 visible.

Thanks!

Not out of the box, I can surely help you achieve it though.
Add this to your aqua.common.js file:

	if(window.location.hash) {
	  var hash = window.location.hash.substring(1); //Puts hash in variable, and removes the # character
	  $(".tabs").children().each(function(){	
			if($(this).attr("href") == "#"+hash) {
				$(this).click();
			}
	  });
	}

after this line:

$('.tabs a').tabs();

That should do the trick, now linking like this should work – /solutions/food/#tab3