KANES KAMP KITCHEN Incorporated, a 30-year-old maker of custom rotisseries ...

Kanes Kamp Kitchen Incorporated, a 30-year-old maker of custom rotisseries for a predominantly Greek clientele, hides out in an anonymous building in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn. The only sign of a prospering business on this hard-worn block is the new-model BMW SUV parked outside of the non-descript brick building that is owner William Kanes' metal shop.

Here, Kanes designs and builds the sophisticated custom barbecues from scratch that he says have made him one of the best-known men in Greek America. "They call Frank Perdue the Chicken Man," says Kanes, a boisterous 70-year-old with animated eyebrows. "Well, I'm the Barbecue Man."

While the location of his factory is discreet, Kanes is not. He may preface many of his claims with phrases like "I don't like to brag," but like a boastful rapper, he clearly takes great pleasure in touting his achievements. For instance, Kanes declares in a lilting Greek accent that some have tried to imitate his work, but all would-be competitors dropped out of business after a year or so. "If anyone tries to copy me, forget it," he says.

This success he attributes to natural talent. Kanes showed promise as a tool maker early in life, when as an eight-year-old in warring Greece he picked up his father's carpentry tools and built himself a gun that shot wooden bullets. He made his first barbecue by hand in 1973, a model with a manual crank that rotated the animal over the spit; a few years later he built his first motorized model.

Kanes has come a long way since those days. At his shop, sheets of stainless and galvanized steel are transformed into barbecues of his design that range from a $125 portable souvlaki grill to the K-32 "Super Double Deluxe Barbecue Spit with Kokoretsi." Kanes calls this model the "Mercedes of Barbecues" because it features three motorized spits that can fit up to six chickens or two lamb and kokoretsi, a Greek delicacy of lamb intestine stuffed with the animal's sweetbreads; plus, it retails for $675. All of his barbecues utilize charcoal?which adds flavor to the meat that other fuels do not?or a combination of charcoal and gas for cooking. "Weber does the same thing," says Kanes, referring to a leading American barbecue manufacturer. "They stole my idea maybe."

Among the additional products that he offers (and Weber doesn't) are a grappa distiller that produces the famously acrid high-proof liquor from the skins of grapes, and a "honeyball" machine that makes the Greek answer to the funnel cakes that are a staple at Greek fairs.

What Kanes takes the most pride in, though, is his role as the facilitator of an ancient Greek tradition in the New World. Evidence of this are the extraordinarily long hours that he works in the months leading up to Greek Easter, which this year was on April 27th. Although he refuses to disclose how many barbecues he sells, Kanes worked seven days a week from 6 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. filling orders for the holiday.

"Second and third generation [Greeks] buy the machine, they want to teach their kids the customs," he tells me. Kanes himself roasts 25 to 30 lambs a year on his K-31 model. "The lamb turns around, you're drinking wine, or ouzo? It's a beautiful sight."