Gravel is really optional for most freshwater aquarium.  Many people with multiple fish tanks sometime switch to bare bottom tanks to reduce the maintenance requirement.  So to answer your question, yes bare bottom tanks are much easier to maintain then ones with gravel or other substrate.  A drawback, like you said, is that you can sometime see food particles and other debris on the bottom.

Before you decide to remove all the gravel, you have to educate yourself about the nitrogen cycle for fish tanks. Nitrifying bacteria live on the surface of the gravel and inside your filter . So if you have a really cheap filter with no room for biomedia inside it, then chances are most of the beneficial bacteria will live on the surface of the gravel.  If you remove all the gravel and your filter only does mechanical filtration of the water, your ammonia level will spike and your fish will perish.  You need a good a quality filter that can hold a lot of biomedia in order to house the beneficial bacteria if you decide to go the bare bottom tank route.

I have less than an inch in my tanks, it's plenty for them to forage in and easy to clean, but I do have canister filters...