Kansas City, Mo. ? In a town where barbecue is an art, some consider what happened to Paul Kirk a tragedy.

Someone stole his grill.

“It was a slap across the face of mankind,” said David Klose, the Houston man who built the giant barbecue cooker. “It’s like stealing a man’s Corvette; it’s a cardinal sin.”

Strong words, but he’s not talking about the rickety grills caked in grease and collecting rust in back yards across America. Over the weekend, Kirk, of Roeland Park, Kan., was robbed of his custom-made $18,000 grill and the $8,000 van that pulled it.

The grill was recovered Tuesday after a call to Merriam, Kan., police led officers to a nearby apartment complex, where they found the cooker and the van. Roeland Park Police Chief Rex Taylor said they had no suspects and were investigating the crime as an auto theft.

For Kirk, a seven-time barbecue champion, the grill keeps food on the table. He caters and teaches barbecue classes, and is known nationally as the “Baron of Barbecue” to readers of his half-dozen barbecuing books. Kirk was featured in a story in the Journal-World in April, after a Lawrence woman hired him to give her husband an all-day one-on-one course on barbecuing techniques.

The thief also got away with food intended for a catering job: at least 10 pounds of brisket, a few whole chickens and a tall stack of ribs.

The envy of any tailgate party, Kirk’s 15-foot one-of-a-kind cooker could gobble up and grill 150 slabs of ribs at once. It took a trailer, equipped with dual axles and electric brakes, to make the 5,000-pound grill mobile.

“This is a custom-built pit,” said Kirk’s wife, Jessica. “There’s not a single other one on the face of the earth like it.”

The thief struck the Kirk family’s quiet cul-de-sac in suburban Roeland Park while they slept after a big day of grilling at the Kansas State Barbecue Championship. The white 1999 Chevrolet van that hauled the grill had the keys on the floorboard on Saturday night. By 5 a.m. Sunday morning, the van and grill were gone.

Since it was stolen, a flurry of angry messages have ignited on thebbqforum.com Web site, one comparing the heist to someone running off with a man’s wife. Messages on the forum went on to discuss possible barbecue grill alarm systems.