Not only do comments help, but they are of the foremost importance. I won't extendexpand on this much, but will give you a direct example, with restaurants and dishes as we're at it:

The research factor

This is eye tracking testing from Jakob Nielsen. As you may see, pictures are absolutely secondary, even when it relates to hyped chefs, people concentrated on the text content and ignored the pictures.

With comments, you can have a lot of fluffy comments, that's for sure, but you'll also have a lot of helpful comments. Remember that you can disguise a photo in any way you want, but most people attends to other user's feedback. A "nice!" is worth a lot more than no good comments at all. You can read a more detailed explanation on this Like Pattern

The Web accessibility factor

Now consider the web accessibility factor: it is possible people can't see your image. However, there's no doubt the comments will increase usability and accessibility for disabled people, specially the visually impaired ones. While THIS IS NOT the only thing you need to do in order to improve web accessibility, it certainly is something that will help both your app and your users

Social Proof

While very related to the first item, this pattern has some differences, and it may be the difference between an app "nobody uses" or a tool perceived as something you and your peers use on a regular basis, providing both trust and authority. Read more about the Social Proof Pattern