SAN FRANCISCO — Gabriela Cámara is having a very good year.

Five years after she moved to the United States from her native Mexico, she is at the tipping point of world culinary fame. Her 20-year-old restaurant, Contramar, is both a beloved institution and a power-lunch destination: the Union Square Cafe of Mexico City. Her San Francisco restaurant, Cala, has established her here as both an eloquent translator of modern Mexican food and an advocate for social justice: She provides health insurance and other benefits to all full-time employees, many of whom are recruited through job programs for the formerly incarcerated.

A glowing documentary film about the restaurants, “A Tale of Two Kitchens,” executive-produced by the actor Gael García Bernal, premiered two weeks ago on Netflix. She has just published a cookbook, “My Mexico City Kitchen” ( Lorena Jones Books ). This summer she will open a restaurant in Los Angeles with Jessica Koslow of Sqirl, whose casually fabulous cooking mirrors her own.

And last month , she got a bigger platform: The Mexican government named Ms. Cámara, 44, to a new Council of Cultural Diplomacy, composed of people who bring global prestige to Mexican culture. The duties are vague, but the recognition is unmistakable. The group includes artists and academics of all kinds, like the architect Enrique Norten; Elisa Carrillo Cabrera, a principal dancer of the Staatsballett Berlin; and the sociologist Silvia Giorguli Saucedo, the first woman president of the Colegio de México.