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If you're anything like me, you've been meaning to try the Jerusalem Market on High Point Road for ages now.

Not long after I moved here, one of my favorite professors - maybe even two of them - recommended the market for both its imported and house-made foods. And since then the name has popped up again and again in conversation: "My neighbor loves that place!" "They make the best hummus. And potato salad. And falafel." "You've got to try it."

Last week, I finally did, and believe me, I'm kicking myself for taking so long to do it.

It was about 6:30 p.m. and my husband and I were afraid we might be arriving too late to try all of the house specialties. We had heard that Saliba, the engaging owner, makes just about the exact amount of each dish that he'll sell in a day, with only the least bit of anything left over.

From the moment we pulled up to the market, I was smitten.

Perhaps it was the proud slogan painted in red on the door, "You will be pleased." Or it may have been the rows and rows of lidded glass jars brimming with all sorts of dried fruits, nuts and candy that greeted us upon entering.

I only know that I was immediately enamored with the shop. It reminded both me and my husband of some of the wonderful little stores in Boston's North End, crowded into tiny storefronts and overflowing with amazing and exotic foods.

We were drawn to the shelves of pantry staples from around the globe: olive oils, chocolates and smoked oysters; pasta, grains and beans of all sorts; coffee beans, cookies and ibriks (Turkish coffee pots). The market has a reach-in cooler filled with yogurt and pita bread of the puffy, paper-thin, pocketed and unpocketed varieties. Some of the bread is made right here in Greensboro.

Fascinated as we were, it took us a good 10 minutes to navigate the rows leading to the rear of the store, where a deli case holds a fantastic array of cheeses and cured meats. A sign hanging above lists five or six sandwiches (available from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.), as well as the salads and prepared foods (hummus, baba ghanouj, foule, tabouli, feta salad, dolmades) we had come to try.

Everything about the place was so enticing, we made up our minds to place an order for the next night -- dinner with friends. In part, this was because many of the items we wanted to try had sold out; in part, it was a perfect excuse to order more than we could eat on our own.

Saliba and I had been talking back and forth while Jake and I browsed. I asked about his dolmades, and he described the way they're made -- almost as much ground almonds as rice, with pine nuts, fresh ("never canned!") tomatoes, onion, olive oil and lemon juice, wrapped in grape leaves then rolled into thin cylinders.

Then he told of a woman who, earlier that day, had bought some to take home for dinner, sat down to eat one with her sandwich, ate eight of them instead and bought every last one he had made.

I imagine this sort of thing happens often at Jerusalem Market. The food here is some of the tastiest I've had in a long time, and the experience of shopping in a place where every item seems to have been lovingly procured by an aficionado is as remarkable.

Because friends were coming for dinner the next night, we couldn't resist ordering some of nearly everything -- hummus, baba ghanouj, foule (chickpea and fava bean salad), dolmades, falafel patties, olives, spinach pies, pita, feta.

Nearly every item we ordered came with a story or gentle admonition -- "Don't buy supermarket feta. Don't do it. Don't buy it. It's more expensive, and it's not good." Words of advice I'll gladly heed after tasting the feta Saliba offered me. Our friends, by the way, devoured it, claiming it the most incredible feta they'd ever had.

All of us devoured everything, actually. The spicy baba and the pine nut-laced hummus, the delicate and flavorful dolmades and the assortment of Greek olives, the falafel studded with sesame seeds and the tart and lemony spinach pies -- exclamations abounded throughout the meal.

The food at Jerusalem Market seems very reasonably priced, especially given its high quality and freshness. The only problem could be that once you start ordering a few things, it's easy to just keep going, adding more and more onto what may have begun as a modest sampling.

We went expecting to pick up a few items -- some hummus, a falafel sandwich -- and ended up having a small feast of a dinner party with friends instead.

But this is the sort of food that's meant to be shared with friends. And Jerusalem Market is the sort of secret you don't want to keep to yourself.

Cheap Eats features local restaurants for diners on a budget. It runs every other week in Go Triad. Contact Angie DeCola at angiedecola@hotmail.com.