Few UI patterns can be as controversial as the hamburger menu. Over the past five years it's become the de facto way of offering a menu on small displays, typically as a website scales into mobile or tablet width using responsive design:

Research shows ("Hamburger Menus and Hidden Navigation Hurt UX Metrics" NNG, (https://www.nngroup.com/articles/hamburger-menus/) 2016) that hamburger menus:

Simply put, the hamburger menu hides items away from users and makes them less discoverable. Additionally, because the menu is hidden, users can't gain a sense of "where they are" in the product.

Some alternative design patterns to the hamburger menu:

In some circumstances, for example if your app has a lot of features that need to be "possible" (see #96 Decide Whether an Interaction Should Be Obvious, Easy, or Possible), the usability trade-off seems worth making, in order to offer these features on mobile rather than removing them, but never use a hamburger menu on the desktop.

If you must use a hamburger menu, then label it menu and spare the user the much-maligned "three lines" icon.