The highly-anticipated downtown location of Phoenicia Specialty Foods is finally open on the first two floors of Park One Place, at the corner of Austin Street and McKinney near Discovery Green. It’s a gorgeous market, stirring all senses and touting more than 6,000 products from 50 countries. Yet Phoenicia actually has a lot more than imports.

With a sleek urban feel, it is a real market in the sense that you can get pretty much whatever groceries you’d need to cook a fantastic fresh meal from scratch as well as prepared foods ready for take-out. There’s quality produce, fresh meats and seafood – at great prices. My guess is that Phoenicia will be a huge hit for downtown residents and visitors to the city, not only for the market, but for the industrial chic MKT Bar featuring boutique wine and beer offerings, lite-bites and live music.

During a recent stroll through the store, fun finds included an abundant variety of beautiful honey, nuts, preserves, oils and vinegars, grains, spices, condiments (think Sriracha and gourmet mustard for insanely cheap prices), every kind of tea imaginable and a fantastic coffee selection. There is a stunning olive bar, and I was also in awe of the cheese department, where we grabbed a chunk of housemade fresh mozzarella vacu-sealed in olive oil and herbs and saw so many fresh, striking chunks of fresh feta, I actually became a little emotional. There is also a “Home Goods” department featuring fine cookware, gadgets and ceramics. L-U-V.

For in-store dining, there is a salad bar, sandwich station, pizza and a hot line of Mediterranean cuisine, featuring gyros and shawarma plates and wraps and various sides. I wanted to love the gyro since it was housed in the house-made pita bread that travels down a 150-foot conveyor belt transporting breads from the second-level bakery to the ground floor, but I actually found the bread to be dry and chewy instead of the tender, pillowy pita I was hoping for. Both the lamb and chicken gyro meat were fine, but nothing special. The housemade tzatziki sauce was good enough (we were glad we asked for extra), and the roasted potatoes had nice flavor but were not served warm enough. The best part of the plate was the cucumber salad, with chunks of cucumber, tomato, red and yellow bell peppers, slivers of red onion and an herby vinegar dressing.

There is a large display of desserts including multiple varieties of baklava and Greek pastries, but I was more tempted by the huge selection of chocolate imports, including European varieties like Cadbury. Again, great prices made me eager to take quite a few of those babies home. We noshed on Bissinger’s dark chocolate-covered blueberries and salt caramels on our way back to The Heights, talked about everything we scored at Phoenicia and vowed our return.