While there is some controversy about it, who is generally known as the 'father of modern French cuisine'?

While August Escoffier is often mentioned, the true father of French cuisine as we know it today is Fernand Point.

Fernand Point (1897-1955) was a well-known French restaurateur in Vienne, a small city twenty miles south of Lyon, who for many years was the owner of La Pyramide, which was considered by many to be the greatest restaurant in the world.

Although he died about twenty years before the introduction of what became called nouvelle cuisine, he is nevertheless considered to be the father of modern French cuisine because of the numerous great chefs that he influenced and trained: his insistence on absolutely fresh ingredients for dishes of regional background, his refusal to use the old-fashioned made-in-advance sauces of the "haute cuisine", and his quest for perfection in everything he served led, in 1933, to his restaurant being among the first to be given the newly introduced three-star rating by the Michelin Guide.

Such master French chefs as Paul Bocuse, Alain Chapel, and Jean and Pierre Troisgros trained under Point and, applying his principles, eventually helped create the nouvelle cuisine of the late 1970s.