An undocumented immigrant does good in Season 5 of Netflix’s ‘Chef’s Table’

With immigration reform and border security at the forefront of the national conversation these days, a new “Chef ’s Table” episode about an undocumented Mexican chef and her successful South Philadelphia restaurant seems particularly relevant.

Dropping Friday, Sept. 28, on Netflix, as one of four Season 5 episodes, the installment about Cristina Martinez, owner of South Philadelphia’s El Compadre, is an example of Latino ingenuity and grit at its best.

Arriving in the city a little over a decade ago, the middle-aged Martinez didn’t have the funds to open up her own restaurant so she started by preparing and selling food out of her apartment. Her cuisine became so popular that she was able to open up a food cart and eventually her own eatery.

Her specialty is barbacoa, a lamb dish native to her home region of Toluca and one that gained her wide acclaim on television and in culinary publications. Today, El Compadre is a fixture on Philadelphia’s foodie scene, attracting diners from around the state and country looking for authentic Mexican cuisine.

“Here’s a story about a woman who worked hard, fought hard to get here,” explains “Chef ’s Table” executive producer David Gelb, “and to set up her life and give a better life for herself and for her daughter. And she’s no different from any other American. And she brings incredible value. The barbacoa she makes, you can’t get that anywhere. “It’s one of the amazing things about the food culture in the United States,” he continues, “is that immigrants come from all over the world and they bring their delicious kind of culture with them, and it would be a tragedy not to have that. And so I think it’s a very important story. You know, she’s been through so much and it’s quite an emotionally wrenching episode to shoot, talking with Abigail Fuller, our director. And she was kind of describing what this episode was like to film and how it was quite emotional and in many ways cathartic for Cristina to tell her story.”

Other stories told this season on “Chef ’s Table” are those of Bo Songvisava, a champion of traditional Thai cuisine at her Bangkok restaurant Bo.Lan; Albert Adria, who is building a culinary empire in his native Barcelona; and Musa Dagdeviren, an Istanbul restaurateur known for his outstanding Turkish cuisine.