How to Find Item in Dictionary Collection?

thisTag = _tags.FirstOrDefault(t => t.Key == tag);

is an inefficient and a little bit strange way to find something by key in a dictionary. Looking things up for a Key is the basic function of a Dictionary.

The basic solution would be:

if (_tags.Containskey(tag)) { string myValue = _tags[tag]; ... }

But that requires 2 lookups.

TryGetValue(key, out value) is more concise and efficient, it only does 1 lookup. And that answers the last part of your question, the best way to do a lookup is:

string myValue;
if (_tags.TryGetValue(tag, out myValue)) { /* use myValue */ }

VS 2017 update, for C# 7 and beyond we can declare the result variable inline:

if (_tags.TryGetValue(tag, out string myValue))
{
    // use myValue;
}
// use myValue, still in scope, null if not found