Why it's impossible to eat at the Anchor & Hope

Giles Coren writes in today's Times:

I say “impossible”. I am aware that, in principle, the chance exists that one could go there and be served a plate of food. I have met people who know people to whom it has happened. But in that sense it is rather like the National Lottery: odds of 14,000,000-1 do not mean “unlikely”, they mean “impossible”. “Somebody has to win,” say inveterate ticket-buyers. But, statistically, they don’t. So, just as I gave up buying lottery tickets a couple of months after it launched, I have now given up (Anchor &) Hope.