Grammatically correct form of "Way <infinitive phrase>"

Question

There's a reasonably common idiomatic phrasing in the form "Way <infinitive phrase>!" that denotatively means "You did a good job of <whatever>", but is almost always used ironically.

Examples include "Way to go!" or "Way to bury the lede!". (These are actually ironic in different ways, in that the first, presumably, is encouraging a good action when the action was bad, whereas the second is ironically encouraging a bad action.)

This has been touched on before in Way to do something, but my question is:

What is the grammatically-correct complete sentence version of this formation? Or is it already and I'm not understanding how?

(Bolded because I've buried the lede.)

I can't actually think of an instance where you'd need to use that basic formation formally; I just can't figure out its basis.

Answer 1

The correct grammatical sentence, with all the deleted, understood stuff [in brackets], would probably be reconstructed along these lines:

• [That is] [*the*] way [in which] [for one/you] to VP.

Phrases like Way to go! result in maximum deletions, through various rules, but the Relative Infinitive construction the way to do V has a rather specialized sense, of being (in this case) not just the way for you to do it, but rather the way it should be done, generically.

There's always a deictic modal flavor of "oughta, shoulda, gotta" with relative infinitives. Which is why it's a compliment; it says you're not just good, you're the best there can be.