GEORGETOWN • For years while working at restaurants, Amanda and Ryan Cooper kept a notebook detailing dreams to open their own.

“We walked around with it,” Amanda says. “We’d jot something down if we ever had a concept.”

The dream of their own restaurant always felt far away.

There was, first and foremost, the capital needed for a pair of industry lifers who through their teenage years and 20s had their minds set less on money and more on service, food and camaraderie. Amanda managed the front of the house and Ryan cooked in the back of the fine dining establishment where they met in 2003, ahead of their marriage in 2010.

And then there was the prospect of family. Flash forward to 2016, when the Denver couple’s second boy was on the way.

“It didn’t faze us to work 70-hour workweeks, that’s just what you do,” Amanda says.

“That was pretty much our lives,” Ryan says. “As we started to build a family and settle down, I almost considered getting out of the industry.”

But suddenly the dream came into view.

The Coopers connected with the owner of a creekside building in Georgetown, a building to catch drivers right off Interstate 70. The property owner wanted someone to turn the building, an old 7-Eleven, into a restaurant unlike any other in this small mountain town.

It was another dream of the Coopers: “To move to a small mountain town and raise our kids where they can ride around on their bikes like it’s 1985,” Ryan says.

The dream became Cooper’s on the Creek.

“We originally thought it was laughable,” Amanda says. “A restaurant in Georgetown. That sounds insane.”

It has indeed been insane, in the way restauranteering in the mountains tends to be insane. The staffing. The booms and busts of the seasons. The inventory that may or may not make it, depending on truckers along the often-treacherous I-70 — “our blessing and our curse,” Amanda calls the freeway.

Business has also been insane for the better.

As summer rolls around, lines will once again spill out the door at Cooper’s on the Creek. People without reservations will wait longer if they must for a patio seat by that glistening, aspen-lined creek, facing craggy mountainsides where bighorn sheep are known to roam.

Primarily, people line up for the food.

A career in fine dining has inspired an approach that Ryan calls “simple and rustic” and “straightforward but delicious.” Paired with signature cocktails and long lists of craft beer and wine, the concept is “gastropub with elevation,” the chef says — elevated enough to taste the difference but proudly unpretentious, casual. The regular hiker, skier or fisherman need not worry about showering for a spot at the bar.

They might just opt for a drink and the highly recommended crispy Brussels sprouts, tossed in a sweet chile sauce that is among sauces made from scratch here. They’ll find a burger — ground tenderloin and chuck hand-mixed with shallots and roasted garlic.

Dinner guests splurge on the grilled angus rib-eye, splashed in a wild mushroom demi-glace that achieves flavor over two days. The dish is complete with fingerling potatoes roasted in duck fat, which is a staple here. French tourists have praised the duck confit.

It’s easy for Ryan to miss the praise, toiling as he does for hours on end in the kitchen, sometimes alone. There is no microwave. There is very little in the freezer. It’s a small kitchen bearing inspirational reminders of Anthony Bourdain, who so succinctly chronicled the despair and joy of the Coopers’ lifelong industry.

It’s “masochistic joy,” Ryan admits. “It’s the organized chaos of the rush that kept us in it. These days, it’s managing a restaurant for ourselves, doing things completely on our terms.”

He and Amanda came with in-depth educations from past management positions. Still, “the rules of a normal restaurant don’t apply here,” she says.

They did not want normal, explaining the four-day inventory they keep for freshness and the specialized vendors who, again, may or may not make it through the mountains. In a bind here in Georgetown, “it’s not like we can go to Safeway or King Sooper’s,” Amanda says.

The Coopers have learned all too well the plight of businesses across the mountains, where cost of living has increasingly thinned the workforce. Suddenly losing a dishwasher in a city is different from losing one here. “It’s not like I can just bring in another dishwasher,” Ryan says.

He has high standards for chefs, who are also more abundant in the city. That can explain long hours alone in the kitchen, what might also be a business decision in the slow season, when the Coopers only hope to break even.

There are costs to dreams. But more than anything, the Coopers sound grateful.

They’ve paid off the loan that gave them the necessary capital in the first place for the restaurant. They were renting for a while in Georgetown, before buying a home a couple of years ago.

It’s the kind of town where their kids can ride around on their bikes like it’s 1985. It’s the kind of town the Coopers might have once detailed in a notebook.

It’s the kind of town that shows up on a Friday night.

“Come on a Friday night and the entire bar is locals,” Amanda says. “It makes it feel like you’re not just running a business, but you’re doing something that has meaning.”

On the menu

Chef and owner Ryan Cooper seasonally mixes it up at Cooper’s on the Creek. He dares not remove a few of the small plates ($9-$17): the crispy Brussels sprouts, the cool and creamy green chile dip and the pot pie of duck confit.

Among lunch sandwiches ($15-$19, with fries), the chicken salad is a favorite, with a sweetness and crunch from dried cherries and marcona almonds. Also recommended is the Reuben, with a housemade 1,000 island dressing. Something unexpected at last check: the spicy jackalope sandwich, with rabbit antelope sausage, hint of habanero, cream cheese, caramelized onion and arugula.

From 3 p.m.-6 p.m., the menu condenses for dinner prep. Happy hour discounts for drinks and pub fare ($9-$15), including duck poutine over hand-cut fries, creole butter shrimp, other hearty dips and a burger.

Burgers ($17-$19, with fries) cross over between lunch and dinner. The Candied Hog is a favorite: chili-dusted candied bacon, gorgonzola and black garlic aioli. The Zen Burger pairs caramelized onion, goat cheese and lemon jalapeno preserves. Salads ($15-$17) also cross menus, with one meeting Cooper’s proud duck confit.

He’s also proud of the grilled angus ribeye, among entrees for dinner ($20-$40). The dish is complete with a mushroom demi-glace sauce with duck fat-roasted potatoes.

The bison short rib is rubbed with coffee and Hatch chili, braised for 15 hours and served with a creamy asiago polenta. From Albuquerque, Cooper puts a New Mexican twist on meatloaf with a spicy sauce and a blend of herbs and seasonings. The menu also, at last check, boasted a bacon-wrapped filet mignon.